Cross shore suspended sand transport on beaches

Cross shore suspended sand transport on beaches Conference

Schmied, L, Kobayashi, N, Puleo, J et al. (2007). Cross shore suspended sand transport on beaches . 2511-2523. 10.1142/9789812709554_0212

Cross-shore sediment transport on beaches has been investigated extensively, however the prediction of beach erosion and accretion accurately even for the idealized case of alongshore uniformity, normally-incident waves, and uniform sediment is still not possible. In order to improve our predictive capabilities, sediment transport models are getting more sophisticated but less transparent. Many are employing sophisticated and computationally intensive wave and hydrodynamic components while still relying on simple empirical formulations for sediment transport. Moreover, the roles of bedload and suspended load are not clear judging from the successful prediction of the onshore bar migration at Duck, North Carolina by Hoefel and Elgar (2003) using the skewed acceleration effect on bedload and by Henderson et al. (2004) using a suspended sediment model. An attempt is made here to synthesize and simplify existing cross-shore sediment transport models with the aim of developing a simple and robust model that is suited for engineering applications. This paper presents a simple probabilistic formulation for bed and suspended sand transport, and examines its effectiveness in predicting the beach profile evolution in the small-scale laboratory setting. © 2007 World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.