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Boulders numbering in the high hundreds/low thousands, and with masses up to $\sim$30 tonnes, were transported onshore by Super Typhoon Haiyan in Calicoan Island, Philippines to maximum ground elevations that could exceed 9m and terminal positions up to $\sim$180m inland. One-dimensional Boussinesq hindcasts of coastal boulder motion showed intermittent transport initiated at the fronts of infragravity swash bores. Transport distances were found to be highly sensitive to wave-height, enough so that observations of terminal positions may be a viable method of estimating rough paleostorm magnitudes. The large accelerations at bore fronts generated significant inertial forces, particularly for larger boulders, but drag forces had greater root-mean-square magnitudes in all simulations. Widely used relations to infer fluid velocities from boulder properties were tested using modeled boulders — inferred velocities at modeled terminal boulder positions were compared to maximum computed Boussinesq fluid velocities at these locations and found to be significantly lower. This underprediction of inferred velocities was greatest for smaller boulders that were strongly mobile. Inferred drag loads compared to modeled values were somewhat more accurate for large boulders when a Froude number of unity was assumed to estimate flow depths. Although these boulders were unequivocally transported by storm waves, their large sizes and distances traveled venture into what has been considered the tsunami range. Thus, care must be taken to interpret the provenance of coastal boulder fields with unknown origin for lower to mid-latitude regions.

Many researchers have pointed out that the use of representative wave approach can give erroneous results in the computation of irregular wave height transformation. However, the representative wave approach seems to be an efficient tool incorporated into beach deformation models because of its simplicity and computational efficiency. It will be useful for practical work, if this approach can be used to compute the irregular wave height transformation. Therefore, this study is carried out to investigate the possibility of simulating irregular wave height transformation by using representative wave approach. A large amount and wide range of experimental conditions, covering small-scale, large-scale, and field experimental conditions, are used to calibrate and examine the model. The rms wave height transformation is computed from the energy flux conservation law. Various energy dissipation models of regular wave breaking are directly applied to the irregular wave model and test their applicability. Surprisingly, it is found that by using an appropriate energy dissipation model with new coefficients, the representative wave approach can be used to compute the rms wave height transformation with very good accuracy.

The breaking-limited (or depth-limited) approach is a traditional method to determine the maximum possible wave height for the design of coastal structures in the surf zone. It is well recognized that the maximum wave height in the surf zone is limited by wave breaking. The maximum possible wave height is usually determined from a breaker height formula. The present study was undertaken to examine the applicability of 14 existing breaker height formulas for computing the maximum possible wave heights. The existing breaker height formulas were examined against measured regular and irregular wave heights. A total of 17 863 data points from 30 sources of published experimental data were used to examine the formulas. The experiments cover a wide range of wave and bottom topography conditions including small-scale, large-scale, and field experiments. It was found that the errors of existing formulas for regular and irregular waves have the same tendency. The existing formulas give considerable underestimation of the maximum possible wave heights in shallow water. The top three formulas were modified by including a new form of relative depth into each formula. Overall, the modified formulas give a considerable better estimation than those of existing formulas.

The development and evolution of crescentic patterns in double-barred systems is explored using a morphodynamic stability model. The description of the surf zone hydrodynamics is based on depth and wave averaged conditions while sediment transport is calculated using a total load formula. The linear stability analysis predicts that an initially rectilinear coast, subject to infinitesimal perturbations and under normal wave incidence, is unstable and can result in the development of crescentic shapes that can be coupled either in-phase (highs and lows of both sandbars are at the same alongshore position) or out-of-phase (highs and lows of one sandbar correspond to lows and highs of the other sandbar). Results of numerical simulations are sensitive to some of the parameterizations used in the description of hydrodynamics. Changes in the breaker index can have an effect not only on the spacing and growth rate of the pattern but also on the type of pattern that develops. An increase in the breaker index leads to a faster growth of the pattern but also to a smaller alongshore spacing. The role of parameterizations in lateral mixing and roughness length appear to be limited.

Waves entering the surf zone initially develop higher harmonics which disappear after two or three wave lengths. The default Lumped Triad Approximation (LTA) in the SWAN wave model generates only (persistent) second harmonics. An alternative approximation (DCTA) is suggested which is based on an analogy with quadruplet wave-wave interactions. It initially generates all (transient) higher harmonics and subsequently a smooth universal spectral tail, in agreement with observations. The DCTA is calibrated with 31 published laboratory cases and then applied to 20 other, one- and two-dimensional cases, including field cases. The conclusion is that using the DCTA instead of the LTA barely affects the significant wave height but improves the mean period and spectral tail of the computed spectra. Further improvements are expected with enhanced high-frequency dissipation.

The wave-induced pressure gradient, ∂p/∂x, at the bottom is related to fluid acceleration and sediment movement in the surf zone. Following similar large-scale laboratory work by Suzuki et al. [2008a], this paper deals with the observations and analysis of bottom pressure gradients on a natural sandy beach. The cross-correlation coefficients between ∂p/∂x and the water surface elevation are high even in the surf zone, and the coefficients are higher than the coefficients between ∂p/∂x and the vertical velocity component or ∂p/∂x and du/dt. The observed nonlinear characteristics of ∂p/∂x are weaker than the laboratory experimental data but extreme values of ∂p/∂x are larger than the experiments. The distributions of exceedance probability of ∂p/∂x are evaluated using the two-parameter Weibull distribution. The modulus of the Weibull distribution is evaluated as a function of local significant wave height normalized by the offshore significant wave height. The exceedance probability distributions of ∂p/∂x show a broader distribution for the field data compared to the laboratory, but are, nevertheless, predicted reasonably well with the Weibull distribution.

The entrained air and turbulence characteristics under a breaking solitary wave on a 1:20 sloping beach are investigated through laboratory measurement. Free surface elevation is obtained from wave gauge measurements. Wave breaking process is captured in detail by a high-speed camera. The bubble image velocimetry (BIV) is used to measure the velocity and the fiber optic reflectometer (FOR) is used to capture instantaneous void fraction in the aerated region. The mean void fraction and velocities in the aerated region are obtained by ensemble averaging over 22 repetitions. Results show that the maximum mean void fraction is 0.6 in the collapsing cavity region and is 0.35 in the splash up region. The time series of the mean void fraction has good synchronization with the instantaneous images taken by high-speed camera. The maximum horizontal velocity occurs in the splash up region and reaches 1.17C shortly after the plunging jet hits the water surface, with C being the phase speed of the primary wave. The turbulence intensities over the entire aerated region are presented and discussed. The measured data can be used for the calibration and verification of the numerical model for aerated flows simulation under breaking waves in the surf zone.

An instantaneous dye-release experiment was conducted in a coastal field study. Dye was released into a longshore current field from the research pier HORS located in Hasaki, Japan. The release point of the dye was placed in a wave reforming zone which lay between a bar, where limited breaking occurred, and shorewards final surf zone, where all waves broke. Longshore current was present between the bar and shoreline. Deformation of the dye patch was observed efficiently and effectively with a moored video system. Some essential characteristics of the surf zone hydrodynamics and shear flow dispersion are explained from the results of video image analyses of the temporal variation of the dye patch distribution.

This study aims at improving the computation of the wave-driven longshore currents in the surf zone. The vertical distribution of wave-driven currents often deviates from a logarithmic vertical distribution, due to the vertical mixing induced by wave breaking. 3D modeling of these currents provides the opportunity to take this vertical variation into account. The current method of computing the bed shear stress in the 3D approach of Delft3D is dependent on the thickness of the near-bed vertical computational layer: the thinner this layer, the larger the bed shear stress and the smaller the wave-driven longshore currents. Computing the bed shear stress using the velocity at the edge of the wave boundary layer avoids this layer dependency. With this method good agreement with measured velocity data from laboratory experiments and field experiments is obtained, except for very close to the shore. Although Delft3D in 2DH and 3D model have similar skill in simulating longshore currents, the 3D approach is recommended for wave-driven sediment transport related problems as it more realistically represents the cross-shore current and suspended concentration profile.