DISCRETE ELEMENT MODELLING OF MOISTURE-LIMITED AEOLIAN SEDIMENT TRANSPORT

The presence of surface moisture on sandy beaches has long been acknowledged as a complicating factor in the process of aeolian sediment transport, reported by Belly (1964), Neuman and Scott (1998) and Davidson-Arnott et al. (2008). Many studies have been conducted on this subject, each offering a wind initiation threshold formula that incorporates the moisture effect differently, found in Belly (1964), Chepil (1956), Fecan et al. (1998), Wang (2006) and Haehnel et al. (2014). However, the impact dynamics in the transport process, regarded as the dominant mechanism for particle entrainment, was neglected in the derivation phase of these existing formulations. Therefore, to gain some insights into the physical mechanism where moisture plays a role in the aeolian process, as well as its impact on various other transport characteristics, this study employs a numerical model on the grain scale.