Irish engineering consultancy Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions (GDG) has completed sediment dynamics study in the Irish Sea, which was funded by the Geological Survey of Ireland under their research and development programme.
Over the past 2 years GDG have been investigating the geomorphology off the East coast of Ireland in order to quantify the impacts of sediment dynamics on upcoming offshore wind farm developments.
The main drivers affecting seabed mobility are the metocean conditions, the geological/geotechnical properties and the seabed topography including any local obstructions such as shipwrecks or wind farm foundations.
There is a significant amount of bathymetric and subsurface data publically available through the INFOMAR data gathering programme, which can be processed to assist in developing site specific models of the subsurface conditions.
As part of the study, GDG undertook a preliminary assessment of shipwreck scour signatures in order to highlight complex local variations in bed flow regime across the study area that is not captured by simple tidal models previously produced for this location.