The Effect of Fluid Acceleration on Sediment Transport in the Surf Zone

Download or read book The Effect of Fluid Acceleration on Sediment Transport in the Surf Zone written by William McKinney Durham and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Cont.) The validity of the two predictive models is substantiated by experiments conducted in a laboratory wave flume. Breaking waves are passed over lightweight, plastic beads representive of uncohesive sediment. The surficial and subsurface transport is experimentally measured. Using velocity records from the laboratory waves, the theoretical models are used to make predictions of each type of transport. Both models produce good agreement with experimental observations. Finally, laboratory wave data from Madsen (1974) are scaled to the the size of waves typical of the surf zone. Using parameters characteristic of sand, the two models predict a subsurface transport of the same order as bedload transport for typical wave and sediment parameters. Furthermore, subsurface transport is found to be proportional to the characteristic length scale of the wave squared, while bedload transport is proportional to the length scale to the power of 1.5.