Data related to "Near-bed sediment transport processes during onshore bar migration in large-scale experiments. Comparison with offshore bar migration."

Abstract:

This paper presents novel insights into nearshore sediment transport processes during bar migration on the basis of large-scale laboratory experiments with bichromatic wave groups on a relatively steep initial beach slope (1:15). Insights are based on detailed measurements of velocity and sand concentration near the bed from shoaling up to the outer breaking zone including suspended sediment and sheet flow transport. The analysis focuses on onshore migration under an accretive wave condition but comparison to an erosive condition highlights important differences. Decomposition shows that total net transport mainly results from a balance of short wave-related, bedload net onshore transport and current-related, suspended net offshore transport. When comparing the accretive to the more energetic erosive condition, the balance shifts towards net onshore transport, and onshore migration, because the short wave-related transport does not decrease as much as the current-related transport. This is related to the effects of skewness and asymmetry combined with larger sediment entrainment and undertow magnitude under the erosive condition. Net transports from streaming in the wave boundary layer and from infragravity waves are noticeable but only play a subordinate role. Identified priorities for numerical model development include parametrization of wave nonlinearity effects and better description of wave breaking and its influences on sediment suspension. The present data, unique in their combination of high measurement detail with fully-evolving accretive beach profiles, help to improve numerical modeling of long-term morphological evolution.

About the data:

The folder “Beach Profiles” contains the measurements from the mechanical profiler before and after each test. To save time, only the morphologically active section of the profiles was measured. Additionally, the folder contains the initial profiles at the start of each sequence (after application of the benchmark waves). Here the full profile was measured.

The structure “MobFrame” contains the absolute cross-shore position of the mobile frame (from which detailed measurements were taken) in the considered tests.

The folder “ACVP” contains structures with ensemble-averaged velocity and concentration measurements in vertical reference to the undisturbed bed level or a few bins below it (zeta0-coordinate system as described in the paper). For better interpretation of the measurements, it also features the ensemble-averaged intrawave instantaneous bed elevation (erosion depth) and the upper limit of the sheet flow layer.

The folder “ADV” contains structures with the ensemble-averaged ADV data of each test. Apart from the velocity components of each ADV they contain the vertical elevation of each ADV with respect to the ACVP transceiver. The ADV measurements were not subject to the same vertical referencing procedure that was described in the paper for the near-bed ACVP measurements.

The folder “OBS” contains structures with the ensemble-averaged OBS data of each test. Apart from the concentration measurements in each OBS sensor they contain the vertical elevation of each OBS with respect to the ACVP transceiver.

The folder “ETA” contains structures with the ensemble-averaged surface elevation data of each test (from different instruments as described in the paper). The location of each instrument is given in absolute cross-shore coordinates x.

For visualizing the near-bed concentration data, which may not be as trivial as visualizing the rest of the data, an example of MATLAB code is given:

%S=ACVP_xx; %to choose which ACVP file you want to look into

con=S.c;

con(con<1)=1; %to cater for the cells where the logarithm is not defined

xphase=linspace(0,1,length(S.solbed)).*ones(size(S.c,2),size(S.c,1));

figure; hold on; box on;

[C,h]=contourf(xphase,S.z,log10(transpose(con)),[0:0.1:3]);

cbh=colorbar; caxis([0 3]);

set(h,'edgecolor','none');

tt=get(cbh,'Title'); set(tt,'String','$log_{10}(c)$ $[kg/m^3]$','Interpreter','Latex');

plot(xphase(1,:),S.solbed,'k','Linewidth',1.5);

plot(xphase(1,:),S.solflo,'r','Linewidth',1.5);

xlabel('$t/T_r$','Interpreter','Latex')

ylabel('$\zeta_0$ $[m]$','Interpreter','Latex')

set(gca,'Fontsize',18)