PREDICTING NEAR-BED SEDIMENT TRANSPORT THROUGH PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY

Abstract

Coastal communities are growing globally, promoted by the ocean’s abundant opportunity for food, recreation, tourism, and green energy. Erosion and accretion along the coast significantly affect the safety of these communities and longevity of coastal infrastructure. To better predict rates of erosion and accretion, sediment transport models and active-bed thickness prediction techniques are of particular importance. Two dimensionless parameters, the Shields and Ursell parameters, are often used to predict rates of sediment transport and wave linearity. The goal of this project is to analyze sediment movement in a laboratory wave flume using particle image velocimetry (PIV). From the analysis we estimate the dimensionless parameters and instantaneous active-bed thickness to predict volumetric sediment transport rates as waves propagate shoreward.