A STUDY ON APPLICATION OF SEDIMENT TRANSPORT MODEL XBEACH TO SURFACE PROFILE CHANGE IN GRAVEL BEACH

Abstract

 The sediment transport model XBeach was applied to existing hydraulic experiments on topographic change of a gravel beach to investigate the influence of parameters related to sediment transport and evaluate the predictive capability of the model through comparison with experimental results. Numerical results showed that the reflective type of beach profile change can be obtained by increasing a factor for landward bed-load sediment transport (uprushfac) greater than unity and decreasing a factor for seaward bed-load sediment transport (backwashfac) less than unity to take into account the effect of in/exfiltration across the beach surface. It was also found that the reflective type of beach profile change cannot be computed simply using the groundwater module. Furthermore, the accuracy of the spatio-temporal change of the beach profile can be improved by calibrating the static friction angle of the sediment (re-poseangle) in addition to the factors of bed-load sediment transport.