ABSTRACT
A marine pollutant spill environmental model that can accurately predict fine scale pollutant concentration variations on a free surface is needed in early stages of testing robotic control systems for tracking pollutant spills. The model must reproduce, for use in a robotic control system simulation environment, the fine-scale surface concentration variations observed by a robot. Furthermore, to facilitate development of robotic control systems, the model must reproduce sample spill distributions in minimal computational time. A combination Eulerian-Lagrangian type model, with two tuning parameters, was developed to produce, with minimal computational effort, the fine scale concentrations that would be observed by a robot. Multiple model scenarios were run with different tuning parameters to determine the effects of those parameters on the model’s ability to reproduce an experimental measured pollutant plume’s structure. A qualitative method for analyzing the concentration variations was established using amplitude and temporal statistical parameters. The differences in the statistical parameters between the model and experiment vary from 69%–316%. After tuning, the model produces a sample spill, which includes a high frequency concentration component not observed in the experimental data, but that generally represents the real-time, fine scale pollutant plume structure and can be used for testing control algorithms.