Preliminary Study of Regulation Schemes for Navigation Channel in Dinh An Estuary, Vietnam

Dinh An Estuary is one of Bassac River’s estuaries as a part of the Mekong delta. The navigation channel entrance, however, has a limited nautical depth due to the presence of a highly dynamic offshore bar at the estuary. Ship’s size sailing on the Bassac River is therefore limited to 5,000 DWT in optimal conditions. It needs to dredge twice a year and a lot of money paid for keeping the channel. Sometimes, the channel was deposited intermediately after dredging. In this paper, according to the specific morphodynamic conditions at the estuary, the advantages and drawbacks for the proposed regulation schemes are established. Four regulation schemes are numerically investigated and analyzed with respect to the behavior of each scheme to improve the water depth in the navigation channel.