Wave-induced Lagrangian drift in a porous seabed

Abstract

The mean drift in a porous seabed caused by long surface waves in the overlying fluid is investigated theoretically. We use a Lagrangian formulation for the fluid and the porous bed. For the wave field we assume inviscid flow, and in the seabed, we apply Darcy’s law. Throughout the analysis, we assume that the long-wave approximation is valid. Since the pressure gradient is nonlinear in the Lagrangian formulation, the balance of forces in the porous bed now contains nonlinear terms that yield the mean horizontal Stokes drift. In addition, if the waves are spatially damped due to interaction with the underlying bed, there must be a nonlinear balance in the fluid layer between the mean surface gradient and the gradient of the radiation stress. This causes, through continuity of pressure, an additional force in the porous layer. The corresponding drift is larger than the Stokes drift if the depth of the porous bed is more than twice that of the fluid layer. The interaction between the fluid layer and the seabed can also cause the waves to become temporally attenuated. Again, through nonlinearity, this leads to a horizontal Stokes drift in the porous layer, but now damped in time. In the long-wave approximation only the horizontal component of the permeability in the porous medium appears, so our analysis is valid for a medium that has different permeabilities in the horizontal and vertical directions. It is suggested that the drift results may have an application to the transport of microplastics in the porous oceanic seabed.