A UNIFIED RUNUP FORMULA FOR BREAKING SOLITARY WAVES ON A UNIFORM BEACH

Abstract

For coastal management, it is of great importance to understand long-wave induced runup processes and predict maximum runup heights. Long-wave in nature could take different forms, such as swells, storm surges and tsunamis. One of the fundamental waveforms is solitary wave, which has a permanent form in a constant depth. Thus, the issue of solitary wave propagation, shoaling, breaking and runup has been an active research area in coastal engineering community, using experimental, numerical and analytical approaches. Among existing runup experiments, only limited numbers of experiments were conducted in large-scale wave flume facilities because of the lack of easy access. To enhance the range of surf parameters for breaking solitary waves, new laboratory experiments were carried out in a large-scale wave flume with a 1/100 slope. Several wave conditions in the experiments were on the borderline of plunging and spilling breakers. The main objective of this paper is twofold. The first aim is to present a new dataset for solitary wave runup. The second objective aims to develop a unified empirical formula, based on the available runup data in the literature and the present new data, for the runup of breaking solitary waves on a uniform slope.