Generation and evolution of longshore sandbars: model intercomparison and evaluation

Abstract

Understanding the interaction between waves and currents in coastal waters and to study their influence on the coastal morphology is of great importance for coastal management. In this paper the ability of several practical sediment transport models is assessed to predict beach profile evolutions. For that purpose, the numerical results of a morphodynamic model are compared against the observed beach profile evolutions during the European project “Large Installations Plan” (LIP), using the measured cross-shore velocity data. The results evidence that the classical energetics model of Bailard (1981) provide the best estimates of bed-profile evolution, under erosive wave conditions, when compared to other four sediment transport predictors. However, the use of more recent models (Nielsen, 2006 and Abreu et al., 2013) also shows that a good estimator of the undertow seems to be crucial in such morphodynamic computations..