Coastal Sediment Transport

and morphology
Prof. D. Roelvink
 Contents
• Overview of problems
• Sediment transport by waves and current
• Longshore sediment transport
• Coastline changes
• Cross-shore sediment transport
• Dune erosion
1) Siltation navigation channel

waves
A A’

Section A – A’
v1 v1 v1
h1 S1 S2 h2 S1 h1

accretion erosion

h2 > h1 → v2 < v1
S2 < S1 (siltation)
2) Accretion / erosion near harbour

S S
Surf zone

Without harbour

S=0

S S

With harbour
Per year: S m3
Accretion after n years: n S m3
Erosion after n years: n S m3
Curved coastline

Distance alongshore
 Wave action

Present-day
coastline

Ancient coastline

dam

• Dam blocks sediment supply to the delta

• Delta lobes are eroded by wave action

• Longshore transport away from the delta mouth, depending on wave climate
• Diffusional process
5) Erosion near a breakwater

A’

erosion

accretion

Section A – A’
7) Dune erosion / erosion pit

?
?

Surge level
MSL after

Before storm

Red or green is the question

Surge level

MSL

Magnitude of erosion
 Erosion time scales
• DUNE EROSION
– Due to storm surges
– Fast process, up to 100 m3/m in a few hours
• STRUCTURAL EROSION
– Due to processes on engineering timescales
– Up to 50 m3/m per year
• LONG TERM EROSION
– Processes on geological timescales (e.g. sea level rise
(IPCC: up to 2m SLR by 2100), land subsidence)
 Surge level

MSL
after

before FLORIDA

Surge level

MSL
after

before
HOLLAND
 General aspects transport

velocity v

Velocity → bottom shear stress τ → tractive force on particle F →

motion of particle

F = Aτ c D 2 
3
F /G D = particle diameter [m]
G B ( ρ s − ρ ) gD 
= ρs= density sediment [kg/m^3]
ρ = density water [kg/m^3]
g = gravity accelaration [m/s^2]
 General aspects transport

Shields parameter
τc ρ −ρ
F /G =C , where ∆ = s

∆ρ gD ρ

Movement if :
F/G > tan φ

for spheres:
τc > 2/3 tan φ
∆ρ gD
φ = internal angle of friction
 Critical shear stress (Soulsby, 1997)

τ cr
θ cr =
ρ g ∆D50

1/ 3
 g∆ 
D* =  2  D50
ν 
General aspects of sediment transport
Suspended transport
saltation
rolling
Bottom transport

Stotal = Ssuspended + Sbottom

Ssuspended Transport through the plane?

Sbedload h
Suspended sediment transport
z=h
velocity v(z)

z
concentration c(z)
x
z=0
h
S suspended = ∫ v( z )c( z )dz
0

v* z v* = shear velocity (=sqrt(τ/ρ))

v( z ) = ln κ= von Karman’s constant (=0.4)
κ z0 z0 = bed roughness length scale
logarithmic velocity profile
Velocity profile, current only

z0=0.04 mm
ks=1.2 mm

Linear scale Logarithmic scale

 Velocity profile, waves vs current
Waves Waves Waves
Current Current Current

Data: Klopman (1993)

Model: 2DV wave-current interaction, Duoc Nguyen et al, 2020

• Wave-only current is weak

• Waves have big influence on current profile for case of current plus waves
 Concentration profile
• Steady state, uniform
• Turbulence: exchange of fluid
and sediment

• cz: concentration as function

of z
• ε z : eddy viscosity
diffusion coefficient
mixing coefficient
General expression bed load transport

 ∂zb 
( mθ − nθcr )
c/2
Sb  ∆gD θ 3
50
b/2
1 − α 
 ∂s 

• Meijer-Peter and Muller (b=0, c=3, m=1,n=1)

• Van Rijn (1984) (b=0,c=3-4,m=1,n=1)
 Coastal Sediment Transport
Longshore Transport and Coastline
Modelling

Prof. Dano Roelvink

 waves
deep
current water
SL Sc

SL Sc surf zone

land

t0 h
1
SL =
t0 ∫ ∫ v( z, t )c( z, t )dzdt
0 0
h
SL
= ∫ ( vc +   ) dz
vc
0
h
S L ≈ ∫ v( z ) c( z )dz
0
Longshore: time-averaged concentration over depth
* time-averaged velocity over depth
 Longshore sediment transport
• Needed:
– v(z) distribution;
– c(z) distribution:
reference concentration + distribution over depth;

waves
Effect of angle wave and currents

SL

currents
Concentration profiles due to waves and current
 Longshore transport
• Example: Bijker-formula (1967, 1971)
van Rijn (1984, 1993, …,2007)
- bottom transport → reference concentration;
- c ( z ) and v ( z ) distributions are taken into account;
- c ( z ) and v ( z ) same 'mechanisms' (parabolic ε f and ε s distribution)
- near-bed concentration dominated by wave boundary layer
 Soulsby – van Rijn formula
• very simple expression
• easy to implement
• reasonably close to Van Rijn’s full formulations
• gives clear insight in mechanisms
• bed load + suspended load
• current plus waves
• critical velocity
• bed slope effect
 1
2 water depth

relative
kinematic
density
viscosity
u, v depth-averaged velocity
 Exercise about lectures 1 and 2
• V=0.7 m/s
• H=1 m
• h=2 m
• T=7 s
• D50=0.2 mm; D90=0.3 mm
• r=0.05 m
• Compute τ c , u0 , f w ,τ w ,τ cw , Sb , S s
 Longshore sediment transport (bulk)
• CERC formula (SPM 1984)
– Sandy environments only;
– Transport determined by longshore wave energy
flux PL;
– Parameters determined at the breaker line!
– Original formulation: Hrms, not Hs
 1m sin φb

φb breaker line

S 1m
surf zone

Energy flux between wave orthogonals P = E n c b

Longshore flux at the breakerline Pl = Eb nb cb cos φb sin φb

S = A Pl,, where A is not dimensionless!

If we substitute energy flux for wave height (E = 1/8 ρgH2), we get:

S = B Hb2 nb cb sin φb cos φb, where B (≈0.04) is dimensionless.

S = volumetric sediment transport [m3/s]

nc = wave group celerity [m/s]
φ= wave angle [-]
H = wave height [m]
CERC formula
 Example
H0S = 1m; T = 7s; φ0=20°
Hb
γ = = 0.7
hb
Determine breaker height:
- first estimate Hb =H0
- calculate breaker depth based on hb =Hb /γ ,
- calculate Hb using Snell's law, Ks and Kr
- repeat last two steps until hb does not change anymore
Here:
= ϕ0 20
= o
, ϕb 7.2o ; S = 0.03 m3 / s = 810,000 m3 / yr
Worked out in excel
rho 1025.00 1025.00 1025.00 1025.00
g 9.81 9.81 9.81 9.81
gamma 0.70 0.70 0.70 0.70
H0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
T 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00
theta0 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00
B 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04
E0 1256.91 1256.91 1256.91 1256.91
C0 10.93 10.93 10.93 10.93
Cg0 5.46 5.46 5.46 5.46
sin(theta0) 0.34 0.34 0.34 0.34
cos(theta0) 0.94 0.94 0.94 0.94
hb 1.43 1.68 1.61 1.63
C 3.74 4.06 3.98 4.00
Cg 3.74 4.06 3.98 4.00
sin(theta) 0.12 0.13 0.12 0.13
theta 6.73 7.30 7.15 7.19
cos(theta) 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99
Ks 1.21 1.16 1.17 1.17
Kr 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.97
Hb 1.18 1.13 1.14 1.14
hb 1.68 1.61 1.63 1.63

S m3/s 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.03

S Mm3/yr 0.76 0.82 0.81 0.81
 Assignment
• Hs0=3m, T=8s, γ = 0.7
• Angle of incidence:
• 75,60,50,45,40,30,20,10 deg.
• Compute conditions at breaker line
• Compute longshore sediment transport using
coefficient B=0.04
Variations of CERC formula

0.045

full CERC

0.04 approx.

0.035

0.03

0.025

/s
3
cb
= ghb ≈ g / γ H b S (m
0.02

S = 0.01 g / γ H 02.5 sin ( 2ϕ0 )

0.015

0.01

0.005

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

0
Longshore sediment transport

Maximum at just less than

45 deg incidence

If incident waves deviate little from shore normal => S≈0

Coastline modeling

Cross-shore view

Volume change in time:

∆𝑉𝑉 = ∆𝐴𝐴∆𝑥𝑥
= 𝑑𝑑∆𝑦𝑦∆𝑥𝑥 = −∆𝑆𝑆𝑥𝑥 ∆𝑡𝑡
Longshore view
 Coastline modeling
• Change in volume over time ∆V:

(1)

• We now need an expression for the transport

gradient in function of the coastline tangent
∆y/∆x
 Coastline modeling
• For small angles of wave incidence relative to the coastline orientation:

where sx is the so-called coastal constant, and Sx,0 is the transport under a
coastline angle of 0 degrees.

Differentation wrt x yields for the transport

gradient:

(2)
 Coastline modeling
• Combining (1) and (2) yields the Pelnard-Considère diffusion equation:
 Coastline modeling
• Case of a groyne on a
straight coast

Pelnard-Considere coastline solution

- 1

0.9

ϕ’ is the angle of wave incidence, S∞ the undisturbed y* 0.8

transport away from the structure [m^3/yr] 0.7

y/(sqrt(4at/pi)*phi)
0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
|x|/sqrt(4*a*t)

X*
 Example application
• At the groyne: x =0 ⇒ x* =0 ⇒ y* =1
– Accretion goes with square
y = 4at ϕ '/ π
root of time and is
proportional with wave
angle
– Time to fill up till tip of π 2
groyne with length L y = L⇒ t = L
4aϕ 2
 Numerical approach
• Compute S-phi curve, if necessary different S-phi
curves per region or cell
• Start at given y(x)
• Compute phi(x)=arc tan (dy/dx) in each point
• Compute S(x)=f(phi(x))
• compute dS(x)/dx in each point
• compute dy/dt=-1/d*dS(x)/dx
• Compute new y = old y + dy/dt * delta t
• Staggered grid is convenient
 Staggered grid
y phiw

phic

i i+1
i-1 i+2
i-1 i i+1

x
 Numerical scheme
yi +1 − yi
ϕ c ,i =
− tan−1
1: n − 1
i=
∆x
Si = (
B H s2.5 g / γ sin 2 (ϕc ,i − ϕ w ) ) 1: n 1
i =−
Si − Si −1
dSdx = i =i 2 : n −1
∆x
1
dydti = − dSdxi i=2 : n −1
d
yit +∆t = yit + dydti ∆t i=2 : n −1
d ∆x 2
∆t <
4S max
 Assignment 3
• Assume that S=B Hs2.5 sqrt(g/gamma)sin(2 (phic-phiw)
• Hs=1m
• Incident wave angle w.r.t. coast is -30 deg.
• B=0.01
• There is a groin at x=20,000 m, infinitely long
• Compute numerically the coastline over 0-40,000 m, at t= 1,2,5,10,20 years
• Compare solution after these times with Pelnard-Considere analytical solution
• Experiment with more groins and with a nourishment at t=0
• Build in the possibility to read an arbitrary initial coastline.
• Write a brief report on the findings and include the MATLAB code