THREE-DIMENSIONAL HYDRAULIC MODELS

Clients: Various Members of the Petroleum Industry, City of Long Beach, County of Orange

Coastal Frontiers personnel have conducted large-scale, three-dimensional physical model studies to investigate wave propagation, armor stability, sediment transport, and the effects of coastal structures. Specific items of interest included refraction-diffraction effects, variations in wave characteristics around coastal structures, and sediment transport in the nearshore zone.

A representative example is a moveable bed model used to predict the effectiveness of beach nourishment coupled with a perched-beach at a Southern California location. Salient findings included an acceleration of alongshore currents in the nearshore region accompanied by scour adjacent to the submerged rock structures used to create the perched beach. The modeling effort, which was undertaken at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, is summarized below.

Perched Beach Structures in Drained Model Basin

Wave Properties

  • Irregular and monochromatic wave generation

  • Variable wave direction

Parameters Investigated

  • Wave refraction and diffraction

  • Sediment transport and beach change

  • Nearshore profile evolution

  • Wave attenuation over submerged structures

  • Seabed scour adjacent to structures