Publication Abstract

Bailard's sediment transport formulation in shelf sea conditions: comparison with observations using a clustering technique.

J. van der Molen

A previously published wave-averaged version of Bailard's sediment transport formulation, intended for use in a numerical model of shelf sand transport, is compared against available field observations from literature. The objective was to test the performance of the transport relation over the wide range of hydrodynamical conditions that can occur at sea. A modified data analysis method was used to assess the reliability of the field observations. The modification consists of a method to cluster the data into classes to enable statistical analysis. The sediment transport formulation is part of the classification method. The method is in principle also suitable to reduce the size of data sets of non-cohesive sediment transport obtained with modern electronic equipment. The results show that the quality of the published field observations is fair, and that the wave-averaged Bailard formulation performs well for low and medium transport regimes in both currents and waves. For those conditions, it yields a slight overprediction of the transports, and a nearly uniform behaviour as a function of the conditions. The formulation underestimates transport rates for very high flow velocities in absence of waves, which is in agreement with earlier findings. The present version of Bailard's wave averaged sediment transport formulation is suitable for computing the local transport rates of fine to coarse sand on continental shelves in conditions ranging from small currents to moderate currents combined with non-breaking waves.

Reference:

J. van der Molen. (2003) Bailard's sediment transport formulation in shelf sea conditions: comparison with observations using a clustering technique. Coastal Engineering 47, 399-412