The Pearl River estuary is distinguished from other estuaries by its numerous rocky islands and complicated topography. Its energy dissipation and mechanism induced by island topography were studied based on three dimensional turbulent model in this area

including the dynamic structure

turbulence characteristic

energy transformation

energy dissipation in different local areas. The results showed that island-induced energy dissipation can be divided into branch zone

turbulent mixing zone

upstream zone and downstream zone

and their dynamic balance is between pressure term

horizontal advection term and turbulent stress term in the turbulent mixing zone

and between pressure term and horizontal advection term in the other zones.