Scaling laws for beach and dune erosion processes

• Published in: Coastal engineering (Amsterdam) Vol. 58; no. 7; pp. 623 - 636
• Main Authors: Van Rijn, L.C., Tonnon, P.K., Sánchez-Arcilla, A., Cáceres, I., Grüne, J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.07.2011
• Subjects: Beaches; Derivation; Distortion; Dunes; Erosion; Flumes; Scaling laws; Trains
• ISSN: 0378-3839; 1872-7379
• DOI: 10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.01.008

This paper is focussed on the derivation of a set of general scaling laws valid for both beach and dune erosion volumes based on scaling law analysis, existing and new experimental results. This latter experiments concern beach profile changes in three different laboratory flumes using identical wave conditions based on Froude scaling. The experiments with planar sloping beaches have been done at three scales: large-scale Hannover wave flume experiment (beach slope of 1 to 15), medium scale Barcelona wave flume experiment (beach slope of 1 to 15) and small-scale Delft wave flume experiments (beach slopes of 1 to 10, 15 and 20) using an identical wave train of irregular waves (single topped spectrum). The available data sets have been used to derive a general set of scaling laws which is valid for both beach and dune erosion under storm conditions. The morphological time scale depends on the depth scale and the length scale, and only indirectly on the sediment size scale. The analysis of the scaling laws shows that laboratory scale models can be operated at distorted scales, if necessary. Finally, two applications of the scaling laws are presented.