Hydrodynamic performance of artificial reef with guide plates: A combined computational fluid dynamics and particle image velocimetry investigation

Artificial reefs (ARs), as one of the important means for restoring marine habitats, largely depend on their structures for hydrodynamic performance. In this study, we combined particle image velocimetry experiment (PIV) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to investigate the influence of a grid guide plate structure on the hydrodynamic performance of the cubic-frame reef. The results reveal that the angles of the front guide plates significantly enhance the upwelling efficiency of the cubic-frame reef, with a maximum increase of 13.06 times. The projected area of the plates also has a significant impact on the upwelling flux. Normalized TKE ( k n ) effectively quantifies wake disturbance intensity and shows a strong correlation with vortex volume. Furthermore, asymmetric plate configurations enhance wake vortex mixing while minimizing energy dissipation. The wake efficiency of the optimized AR structure is 28.31 times greater than that of the cubic-frame reef. These findings demonstrate that optimized guide plate configurations can enhance upwelling efficiency and wake mixing by more than an order of magnitude, providing a practical design basis for constructing artificial reefs that improve water exchange and habitat quality in marine ranching applications.