Effect and propagation of water level fluctuations in a sloping sandy beach -- Unsaturated porous media II: numerical simulation test of single harmonic wave (long run)

Yunli Wang (1) , Rachid Ababou (2) , Manuel Marcoux (2)

1 Southwest Hydraulic Engineering and Science Institute for Waterways (ChongQing, China)
2 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse

In coastal processes, the strong water movements due to short periodic waves (such as sea swell) can induce irregular water level fluctuations in the swash zone and within the sandy beach. The measured water level fluctuations with very complex entry water level fluctuations in a wave canal with a sloping sandy beach were analyzed by using 7 capacitive sensors. Numerical simulations have also been implemented in order to complement the experimental water level signal analyses. In this paper, a numerical test of single harmonic wave (long run) with same computational domain and porous media properties as the experiment is conducted to understand the effect and propagation of the water level fluctuations in the unsaturated porous media. The key coupling parameter of the macro (sea water) porous and micro (sloping sandy beach) porous media in the Richards equation model is further identified by this numerical test, which is the basis to simulate and explain the complex experimental results.

Mots clés: Water level fluctuations; Signals; Single harmonic wave; Macro-porous media; Micro-porous media; Sloping sandy beach; Unsaturated flow; Richards equation; Coupling

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Yunli Wang, Rachid Ababou, Manuel Marcoux. Effect and propagation of water level fluctuations in a sloping sandy beach -- Unsaturated porous media II: numerical simulation test of single harmonic wave (long run). ICETCE 2012 (18-20 May 2012) : The 2nd International Conference on Electric and Civil Engineering, May 2012, Three Gorges, China. pp.1032-1036. ⟨hal-00926706⟩