Roles of breaking and reflection in wave energy attenuation on the shoreface-nourished beach

Abstract

Shoreface nourishments with the artificial sandbar are effective strategies to mitigate coastal erosions mainly by wave breaking and reflection. Thus, a better understanding of the contributions of breaking and reflection in wave energy loss is important for the prediction and description of the performance of the shoreface nourishment. Experiments are conducted in a wave flume, and data analysis is complemented with numerical simulations performed with a phase-resolving model. Both incident and reflected wave heights are well reproduced by the numerical model. The ratio of reflection to reflection-plus-breaking energy loss ranges from 4% to 11%, implying the dominant role of breaking-induced dissipation over reflection in present cases. The wave transmission coefficient decreases with the decrease in the bar crest depth and onshore implementation of the artificial sandbar. The trapezoidal artificial sandbar promotes an intense wave breaking over the berm width and is more effective in eliminating waves than the triangular artificial sandbar. Due to the erodible nature of the artificial sandbar, future works will consider the use of a hydro-morphological coupled approach to study the time-varying characteristics of wave breaking and reflection during morphological evolution.