Morphodynamics on a beach with a submerged detached breakwater

Submerged breakwaters are widely used in coastlines around the world. However the state-of-the-art knowledge for designing this kind of structures includes numerous shortcomings. This paper presents results of a coupled morphodynamic numerical model applied to an idealized beach typical of the Mediterranean coast. An analysis of the physical process involved in the morphological beach response and the effect of some design parameters such as the distance to the shoreline and submergence has been carried out. The relation of the water mass fluxes induced by wave breaking over the structure in the final morphological coast evolution has been shown and discussed. A relationship between breakwater distance to coast and the structure morphodynamic efficiency has been proposed, based on the obtained numerical results.