Modelling shoreline evolution in the vicinity of shore normal structures

Abstract

While waves are propagating towards the shore and are interrupted by an obstacle like a groyne, they will turn around the tip into the sheltered region of the groyne. This sheltered region is called the shadow zone and contains a reduced wave climate. The turning of the waves is based on the lateral transfer of wave energy along the wave crest, caused by a gradient in wave height. This process is called diffraction. Breaking wave heights and angles inside the shadow zone will be influenced significantly because of wave diffraction. Since variations in breaking wave height and/or angle are responsible for gradients in the alongshore sediment transport, should the process of wave diffraction be taken into account while simulating the shoreline evolution in the vicinity of a groyne. Different methods were found to incorporate the effects of wave diffraction inside the coastline model ShorelineS.

The improved model performance of ShorelineS regarding a real-world case study is addressed by using the shoreline of Constanta, Romania. The consequence of incorporating wave diffraction effects onto the shoreline evolution of Constanta is demonstrated in detail. The accretion close to the Southern groyne and erosion near the Northern groyne is visible in the numerical result of the improved model. Therefore, matching the observed anti-clockwise rotation of the coastal cell. Without accounting for diffraction effects, this matching result was not achievable. The transition zone width is found to be an important factor in determining the coastline shape affected by diffraction. After calibration of this parameter, the numerical result demonstrated to be in almost perfect agreement with the observed coastline shape. The root mean square error and bias reduced with factors of 5.5 and 5 compared to the numerical result excluding diffraction effects.