Analytic Solution Shoreline at Jetty under Varying Wave Climate

Abstract

Future shoreline changes on a sandy beach with a structure such as a jetty or groin can be predicted when wave climate is known. An existing solution for the linearized partial differential equation for shoreline change is presented for the situation where wave climate is not changing and when the angle of the shoreline is small with respect to the waves breaking at the shoreline. The novel solution provided in this paper allows the previous constant wave condition solution to be utilized to be extended to the case where wave climate (i.e. wave direction and wave height) is time varying. Example usage of the method presented shows that shorelines are of different final planform shape for time varying wave conditions even though the sediment transport is the same from time step to time step. Reversals of wave climate time series are shown to provide very different final shoreline shapes even though time series consist of the same wave conditions although in different ordered time.