Coastal Processes With Engineering Applications

Text on coastal engineering and oceanography covering theory and applications intended to mitigate shoreline erosion.

Features concepts in coastal engineering and their application to coastal processes and disaster prevention works. This title describes basic concepts of coastal engineering, dealing mainly with wave-induced physical problems. It consists of the author's results of 30 years' scientific research on the progress of coastal sediment transport study.

The United Nations estimate that by 2004, in excess of 75% of the world's population will live within the coastal zone. These regions are therefore of critical importance to a majority of the world's citizens. The coastal zone provides important economic, transport, residential and recreational functions, all of which depend upon its physical characteristics, appealing landscape, cultural heritage, natural resources and rich marine and terrestrial biodiversity. This resource is thus the foundation for the well being and economic viability of present and future generations of coastal zone residents The pressure on coastal environments is also being exacerbated by rapid changes in global climate. The value of the coastal zone to humanity, and the enormous pressure on it, provide strong incentives for a greater scientific understanding which can ensure effective coastal engineering practice and efficient and sustainable management. Coastal Engineering: Processes, Theory and Design Practice is the only book providing a thorough introduction to all aspects of coastal processes, morphology and design of coastal defences. The use of detailed and state-of-the art modelling techniques are an important theme of this book, and there are numerous case studies showing actual examples where mathematical modelling has been applied through engineering judgement. With thorough coverage of the theory, and practical demonstration of the applications, Coastal Engineering: Processes, Theory and Design Practice is a must have for all students and engineers working in coastal management and engineering. .

Accompanying CD-ROM in pocket at the back of book

Much of the U.S. coastline is rapidly changingâ€"mostly eroding. That fact places increasing pressure on the planners and managers responsible for coastal development and protection, and could have a direct effect on many of the 125 million Americans living within 50 miles of the coast who rely on its resources and beaches for their livelihood or recreation. Although rapid advances have been made in the measurement systems needed to understand and describe the forces and changes at work in the surf-zone environment, their potential for allowing more accurate and reliable planning and engineering responses has not been fully realized. This book assesses coastal data needs, instrumentation, and analyses, and recommends areas in which more information or better instrumentation is needed.

The second edition (1997) of this text was a completely rewritten version of the original text Basic Coastal Engineering published in 1978. This third edition makes several corrections, improvements and additions to the second edition. Basic Coastal Engineering is an introductory text on wave mechanics and coastal processes along with fundamentals that underline the practice of coastal engineering. This book was written for a senior or first postgraduate course in coastal engineering. It is also suitable for self study by anyone having a basic engineering or physical science background. The level of coverage does not require a math or fluid mechanics background beyond that presented in a typical undergraduate civil or mechanical engineering curriculum. The material p- sented in this text is based on the author’s lecture notes from a one-semester course at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Texas A&M University, and George Washington University, and a senior elective course at Lehigh University. The text contains examples to demonstrate the various analysis techniques that are presented and each chapter (except the first and last) has a collection of problems for the reader to solve that further demonstrate and expand upon the text material. Chapter 1 briefly describes the coastal environment and introduces the re- tively new field of coastal engineering. Chapter 2 describes the two-dimensional characteristics of surface waves and presents the small-amplitude wave theory to support this description.

This volume contains six papers discussing coastal processes, and physical and numerical modeling.In the first paper, Svendsen and Putrevu give an extensive review on the state of understanding of surf-zone hydrodynamics, including subjects such as wave breaking, wave-induced currents, and instability of nearshore currents and infragravity waves. They point out that the most urgent need is to develop an adequate theory for wave breaking and broken waves in the surf zone.One of the methods for studying the complex coastal processes is to perform laboratory experiments. However, physical models are always plagued by scale and laboratory effects, because the coastal process involves many different length and time scales. In the second paper, Kamphuis presents a detailed discussion on the sources and implications of the scale and laboratory effects on physical modeling.The third and the fourth papers are two parts of the discussion on the mathematical modeling of the meso-tidal barrier island coasts. To understand the dynamics of coastal inlet systems, one can either rely on empirical knowledge and construct various forms of empirical and semi-empirical models (Part I), or develop a set of mathematical models based on the physical processes (Part II). Although these models do not provide the details of the dynamics, they give valuable knowledge of the equilibrium-state relationships. de Vriend and Ribberink give a detailed review on two models, Initial Sedimentation/Erosion models and Medium-Term Morphodynamic models. They have also presented many examples of applications.In the fifth paper, Houston gives a brief review on different methods to mitigate beach loss caused by storms or persistent long-term erosion. He then describes, in detail, the method of beach nourishment, which is also called a beach fill. This paper discusses the information that must be collected to design a beach fill and that should be monitored after the completion of the project.The last paper of this volume shifts our attention to the design of offshore structures, such as gravity structures, floating barges and tankers. Chakrabarti discusses the effects of the uniform and shear currents on fixed and floating structures.

This book provides us with important concepts in coastal engineering, their applications to coastal processes and disaster prevention works. It is designed for graduate students pursuing advanced studies in coastal processes and for engineers and managers of coastal zone management. The first part describes basic concepts of coastal engineering, dealing mainly with wave-induced physical problems in the field of coastal engineering and hydraulics. The second part consists of the author's results of 30 years of scientific research on the progress of coastal sediment transport and coastal disasters. In terms of sediment transport study, the book covers not only coastal zones but also sediment production in river basins and river sediment transport to understand the present reasons for coastal erosion. A number of case studies for various countries around the world are given, and from the descriptions provided, it is possible to understand the different problems and challenges facing each country.