Occurrences of chaotic mixing: A preliminary investigation of Malaysian coastal water

Abstract

Coastal development in Malaysia poses immense pressure on the water quality and aquatic ecosystem along our coastline. The ubiquitous phenomenon of chaotic mixing reveals the insufficiency of conventional simplified averaging model for pollutant dispersion. This paper considers chaotic advection as a relatively young science in environmental fluids. A preliminary investigation of the mixing features along Malaysian coastline is presented, with special emphasis on the occurrences of Lagrangian chaos. It is concluded that the chaotic dynamical approach to the study of environmental fluids is here to stay and local environmental scientist and engineers ought to keep abreast of the state-of-the-art in chaotic modeling and analysis.