On the role of shoreline boundary conditions in wave overtopping modelling with non-linear shallow water equations

Abstract

The note extends and completes the analysis carried out by Briganti and Dodd [Briganti, R., Dodd, N., 2009. Shoreline motion in nonlinear shallow water coastal models. Coastal Eng. 56(5–6) (doi:101016/j.coastaleng.2008.10.008), 495–505.] on the performance of a state of the art Non-Linear Shallow Water Equations solver in common coastal engineering applications. The case of bore-generated overtopping of a truncated plane beach is considered and the performance of the model is assessed by comparing with the Peregrine and Williams [Peregrine, D., Williams, S.M., 2001. Swash overtopping a truncated beach. J. Fluid Mech. 440, 391–399.] analytical solution. In particular the influence of shoreline boundary conditions is investigated by considering the two best performing approaches discussed in Briganti and Dodd [Briganti, R., Dodd, N., 2009. Shoreline motion in nonlinear shallow water coastal models. Coastal Eng. 56(5–6) (doi:101016/j.coastaleng.2008.10.008), 495–505.]. Different distances of the edge of the beach from the bore collapse point are tested. For larger distances, the accuracy of the overtopping modelling decreases, as a consequence of the error in modelling the tip of the swash lens and, consequently, the run-up. A sensitivity analysis using the numerical resolution is carried out. This reveals that the approach in which cells shallower than a prescribed threshold are drained and wave propagation speeds for wet/dry Riemann problem are used at the interface between a wet and a dry cell (referred as Option 2ea in [Briganti, R., Dodd, N., 2009. Shoreline motion in nonlinear shallow water coastal models. Coastal Eng. 56(5–6) (doi:101016/j.coastaleng.2008.10.008), 495–505.]) performs consistently better than the other.