Numerical simulation of sediment transport in coastal waves and wave-induced currents

Prediction of coastal sediment transport is of particularly importance for analyzing coast erosion accurately and solving the corresponding coast protection engineering problems. The present study provided a numerical scheme for sediment transport in coastal waves and wave-induced currents. In the scheme, the sand transport model was implemented with wave refraction-diffraction model and near-shore current model. Coastal water wave was simulated by using the parabolic mild-slope equation in which wave refraction, diffraction and breaking effects are considered. Wave-induced current was simulated by using the nonlinear shallow water equations in which wave provides radiation stresses for driving current. Then, sediment transport in waves and wave-induced currents was simulated by using the two-dimensional suspended sediment transport equations for suspended sediment and the bed-load transport equation for bed load. The numerical scheme was validated by experiment results from the Large-scale Sediment Transport Facility at the US Army Corps of Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg. The numerical results showed that the present scheme is an effective tool for modeling coastal sediment transport in waves and near-shore currents.