Analytical and numerical modelling of wave dissipation over rigid and flexible vegetation in a flume: Drag coefficient calibration

Abstract

Coastal vegetation can contribute to protect the coasts from sea wave action, as controlling local biology and morphodynamics. A common way to estimate the wave energy dissipation over vegetation is to use the Mendez and Losada (2004) analytical formulation in combination with the calibrated bulk drag coefficient parameter (CD). However, an excessive range of CD values is found in the literature related to same Reynolds (Re) or Keulegan-Carpenter (KC) numbers. This may be due to a lack of universality of the empirical equations proposed and/or limitations of the analytical model. The numerical model SWASH (Zijlema et al., 2011) characterises wave dissipation over vegetation fields (Suzuki et al., 2019, 2022; Reis et al., 2020) considering the influence of the drag, inertia, and porous effects on cylindrical structures. Potentially, SWASH offers enhanced capacities to describe the physical processes involved and to calibrate associated CD values. Wave dissipation over vegetation data was collected by performing laboratory flume experiments, enabling an ideal control of the study conditions. The analytical formulation and the SWASH numerical model are applied to estimate the wave dissipation obtained in the experiments, through the calibration of the CD. The objective of this study is to investigate: i) how the analytical and SWASH models can represent the experimental wave dissipation, and ii) the calibrated CD values obtained from each modelling approach.