Simulating the movement of bed and suspended loads in the coastal environment

Abstract

A dynamic computer simulation model is implemented to simulate wave-induced transport of bed and suspended material, and the associated development of nearshore profiles. The model uses the Airy, Stokes', cnoidal and solitary wave theories to compute the height, length, celerity, steepness, breaker indices, and horizontal, veritical, mass drift and orbital velocities of random waves propagating along a flat slope. With shoreward wave propagation both bed and suspended loads are computed at discrete grid points. The FORTRAN '77 simulation program is executed for 3000 iterations, with each iteration corresponding to one twelfth of a tidal cycle. The simulated results demonstrate that sediment movement is controlled by the magnitude of the drift, orbital and horizontal wave velocity components, with wave breaking having a direct influence on the deposition of transported bed load. The shallow water regions of cnoidal and solitary waves are characterized by the presence of high concentrations of suspended material. Over the runlength of the simulation, transport of bed and suspended material cause the initialized profile state to change through a sequence of ill-defined transient states to a final morphological state. Examination of the sequence of profile states indicate weak resemblances of barred and nonbarred profile configurations.