Abstract
Irregular coastlines and variable bathymetry produce nonlinear effects on wave propagation which play a significant role on the formation of nearshore currents. To protect the coastline from the erosional action of nearshore currents, it is usual to adopt coastal defence works such as submerged breakwaters. If properly designed, they give rise to circulation patterns capable to induce sedimentation of suspended material at the nearshore region. To numerically simulate the hydrodynamic effects of submerged breakwaters in irregular coastal areas, we use a numerical model which is based on an integral contravariant formulation of the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations in a time-dependent coordinate system. These equations are numerically solved by a non-hydrostatic shock-capturing numerical scheme which is able to simulate the wave propagation from deep water to the shoreline, including the surf zone and swash zone.
Highlights
The coastal regions can be characterised by a coastline of irregular shape and high variability in the water depth, where transformation of nonlinear waves takes place due to processes such as refraction, shoaling and wave breaking
Coastal circulation patterns characterised by offshoredirected currents can occur in curve-shaped coastal areas, due to natural seabed variability or water depth variations produced by submerged breakwaters
The main drawback of the numerical models based on this approach is the significant increase of the computational time with respect to the models based on the depth-averaged motion equations
Summary
The coastal regions can be characterised by a coastline of irregular shape and high variability in the water depth, where transformation of nonlinear waves takes place due to processes such as refraction, shoaling and wave breaking. In Bradford (2011), Ma et al (2012), Cannata et al (2017), and Gallerano et al (2017), the Navier–Stokes equations are written in a coordinate system in which the horizontal coordinates coincide with the Cartesian coordinates and the vertical one is a time-dependent curvilinear coordinate These models are able to simulate in fully three-dimensional form the wave propagation from deep water, where dispersive effects are dominant, to surf and swash zones, where the nonlinearity of the motion equations allows to represent the shoaling and the wave breaking, and do not require to switch off any term of the equations.
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