Consolidation

Once the sediment has settled on the sea bed it will start consolidating. It will do this due to the weight of the sediment settled over it. This process leads to a slow compression of the sediment in the lower layers. Therefore the sedi­ment will increase in density and strength with time. This process also leads to a drop in the bed level if no further sediment is present.

The consolidation of the bed can be described by means of a transfer func­tion T_f, which transfers sediment between the bed layers in the downward direction at a constant rate. The sediment fractions will be transferred as a mass with the given fraction distribution in the given time step. The transfer function for the i’th bed layer is:

Tf,i = constant,

The sediment is hereby transferred from a layer with a certain density and critical shear strength to a layer with (typically) higher density and shear strength.