Influence of profile features on longshore sediment transport

Influence of profile features on longshore sediment transport

Mil Homens, J.P.
Ranasinghe, R.W.M.R.J.B.
Van Thiel de Vries, J.S.M.
Stive, M.J.F.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

2013-06-24

Longshore sediment transport (LST) is one of the main drivers of beach morphology. Bulk LST formulas are routinely used in coastal management/engineering studies to assess LST rates and gradients. However, there is still great uncertainty in LST estimation with these bulk formulas. This uncertainty may have two sources: 1) experimental errors in the measured values and 2) the effect of parameters that are not part of the formulas. In this study, we attempt to find the influence of profile related features in the LST rates that are not accounted for in the bulk formulas. These features may influence the type of wave breaking. A process-based model (UNIBEST-LT) is used to calculate LST rates on a large number of profiles measured on the Dutch coast, all forced with the same realistic wave climate. We found that the LST rates vary with the profiles. The value corresponding to the 95th percentile of the resulting distribution is 50% higher than one correspondent to the 5th percentile. The root mean square downward slope parameter showed the best correlation with LST rates.

longshore sediment transport
process based models
UNIBEST-LT
cross-shore profile features

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:612432d4-62a6-451b-8476-3a48859dea35

Bordeaux University

Coastal Dynamics 2013: 7th International Conference on Coastal Dynamics, Arcachon, France, 24-28 June 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)