WAVE SETUP ON VEGETATED BEACH: LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

In this study, wave height evolution and wave setup were measured in a laboratory wave tank with a sloping beach covered with rigid and flexible artificial vegetation under regular and irregular wave conditions. The experiments were conducted in a 20.6 m long, 0.69 m wide and 1.22 m deep wave tank at the USDA-ARS National Sedimentation Laboratory, Oxford, MS, USA. Regular and irregular waves were generated using a computer controlled piston type wave generator. A plane wooden beach with a 1:21 slope was constructed at the down-wave end of the wave tank, 11.5 m away from the wave paddle. Rigid vegetation was constructed out of wooden dowels and flexible vegetation was constructed using polyurethane tubes. Both vegetation models were 3.1 mm in diameter and 0.2 m long and had a population density of 3,182 stems/m2. The results were compared with those from experiments on a non-vegetated plane beach. Both rigid and flexible vegetation models reduced the wave height and wave setup substantially, but rigid vegetation typically performed better in reducing wave setup. For some of the experiments, no wave breaking was observed over the vegetated models, indicating that wave attenuation due to vegetation reduced the shoaling rate. For other experiments, wave breaking was observed and wave height attenuation was very small; however, wave setup was still significantly lower than in the plane beach experiments.