Study on alternatives of sand placement method for beach nourishment project

Abstract

The term beach nourishment generally refers to the process of adding sediment to a beach or dune system as an effort to protect the shoreline area due to the development that have interrupted the natural and necessary movement of sediment and have interfered with coastal processes at beaches. Due to the fact that this project is executed using sand, there is a possibility that erosion could occur again. As a result, the nourishment of beaches becomes a continuous and expensive series of protection project. Moreover, the analysis of cross-shore sediment transport is complicated due to the variability of factors contributing to sediment movement. Consequently, advanced researches are needed to improve the effectiveness of beach nourishment program, especially for establishing the alternative method of sand placement to optimize the performance of nourishment project. Laboratory experiments were conducted with the aim of discover more effective nourishment strategy particularly to find the best alternative for sand placement method. Due to the experiment results, beach profile using larger sand in foreshore and small sand in backshore shows no significant differences compared with the profile only using the large sand. Therefore, beach profile using larger sand in foreshore and small sand in backshore can be proposed as an alternative for sand placement in beach nourishment program.