NSF GRANT #0530759 and #0649155 NSF PROGRAM NAME: CMMI

Enhanced Sediment Transport due to Wave-Soil Interactions

Yin Lu (Julie) Young Heng Xiao Princeton University
Abstract: The objective of this work is to study the dynamics of enhanced sediment transport due to wavesoil interactions via physical and numerical simulations. A large-scale tsunami scour study has been designed and carried out during the summer of 2007 at the tsunami wave basin at NEES@OSU to study tsunami induced sediment transport and scour. The results showed that majority of the scour occurred during the drawdown due to enhanced sediment mobility as a result of upward pore pressure flux caused by transient wave-soil interaction. Hence, for a constant sloped fine sand beach, positive solitary waves lead to erosion above the shoreline and deposition in the breaking region. Since the large-scale tsunami scour study was limited to the use a fine dune sand from Oregon beach, a separate set of experiments have been designed and it is currently being carried out to study the effects of grain size and upward seepage on sediment transport under current and/or wave loads. Parallel to the experimental studies, the authors also developed and validated the first transient tsunami sediment transport model that accounts for the effects of transient wave dynamics and wave-soil interactions. 1. Introduction: It is well known that storm surges and tsunamis can mobilize substantial amount of sediment deposits. The resulting scour can undermine building foundations, roadways, sea walls, embankments, underground pipelines, and other coastal structures. Ample evidence of large-scale scour around engineered structures can be found following the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which contributed to the partial or complete collapse of a number of coastal structures [1-3]. During a storm surge or tsunami runup over a permeable seabed, the initially dry soil bed may become saturated due to ponding of water as a result of poor drainage (mild slope, blockage of seaward flow by protective structures such as dikes or vertical walls, etc) and repeated or prolonged wave inundations. When the inundation water recedes during the drawdown, the excess pore pressure may be released due to sudden change in hydrostatic head and phase difference (i.e. time lag) between pore pressure variations in the underlying soil layers and water pressure variations on the bed surface. The resulting upward seepage may lead to enhanced sediment mobility due to increase in upward pressure flux on the particle and reduction in soil shear strength. Scour can develop very rapidly under such conditions when combined with flowinduced shear stress. When the vertical effective stress (and hence shear strength) in the soil reaches zero due to excess pore pressure buildup, the soil will liquefy and behave like a heavy liquid that can be easily transported by the flowing fluid. In the past few decades, much work focused on the study of wave-seabed interactions due to field reporting of wave-induced soil failure of coastal structures (breakwaters, vertical walls, caissons, pipelines, etc) [4,5]. An excellent review of previous experimental (field and laboratory) and theoretical work related to seafloor dynamics reported in the past 50 years has been presented in [6]. He concluded that pore pressure fluctuations in the sea bed due to short period waves are significant and are affected by the soil permeability and deformability, and wave-induced liquefaction is related to the upward seepage flow induced in the sea bed during the passage of wave troughs [6]. Nevertheless, to the authors knowledge, almost all previous experimental and numerical work on wave-soil interactions focused on short period waves over flat soil bed. Hence, the effects of wave runup, drawdown, and wave-soil interactions in the near shore region due to storm surge or tsunami inundation have not been considered. Moreover, the role of wave-soil interaction in sediment transport has been mostly ignored except for the experimental studies by [7], which investigated the mechanisms governing tsunami scour around a vertical cylinder near the shoreline. They found that the most rapid scour for sand substrate occurred at the end of the drawdown, when the flow velocities and shear stresses are relatively small, due to pore pressure gradient generated from the rapid decrease in bed surface pressures [7]. Although their studies provided significant insights on tsunami scour around a cylindrical structure near the shoreline, it did not consider cases without the cylinder or other types of coastal structures. In addition, it did not provide

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155

enough data to develop a proper sediment transport model. 2. Objective: The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of enhanced sediment transport due to wave-soil interactions through experimental and numerical simulations. 3. Experimental Simulations: In order to investigate the role of enhanced sediment transport due to wavesoil interactions during tsunamis and storm surges, two sets of experiments were designed. 3.1 Large-Scale Tsunami Scour Study at NEES@OSU: The first set of experiments is funded by the NSF George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (Grant No. 0530759) as part of the Performanced Based Tsunami Engineering project. It was carried out over nine weeks during the summer of 2007 inside a 48.8m long x 2.16m wide x 2.1m deep flume especially conducted for this project at the Tsunami Wave Basin (48.8m long x 26.5m wide x 2.1m deep) at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at Oregon State University. An overview of the experimental setup inside the flume is shown in Fig. 1. The flume was heavily instrumented to measure the wave profiles and near-bed flow velocities onshore and offshore, the vertical distribution of the flow velocity and sediment concentrations, the nearbed fluid pressure gradient in the flow direction near the wave breaking location, the vertical and horizontal pore pressure gradients near the shoreline, and the bed profile changes before and after the wave runs. In addition, windows were especially constructed in one of the flume walls to allow visualization of the wave-soil interactions via underwater video cameras. A detailed description of the experimental setup is presented in [8]. This is the first large-scale experiment designed specifically to study the dynamics of sediment transport and scour due to tsunami runup and drawdown. The goal of this work is to improve the understanding of the governing mechanisms of tsunami scour, and to provide benchmark experimental data for the development and validation of tsunami sediment transport models. A tremendous amount of experimental data was collected over the nine week long tsunami scour experiment, which concluded on 8/3/2007. Results for the 60cm solitary wave runs over an initially 1:15 constant sloped fine sand beach (medium grain diameter, D50=0.21mm) with initial water depth of 1m can be found in [8]. The results were systematically analyzed to study the effects of wave

breaking, bore runup, wave drawdown, and waveinduced pore pressure variations on tsunami erosion and deposition processes. An example of the measured time history of the wave surface profile (h8), nearbed axial flow velocity (V8), and sediment concentrations (C3 and C4) at x=23m (4m seaward of the initial shoreline, which is within the wave breaking zone between x=22m-25m) are shown in Fig. 2. The time histories of the wave surface profile (h12), normalized vertical (dp/dz) and horizontal (dp/dx) pore pressure gradients at the initial shoreline (x=27m) are shown in Fig. 3. Sample videos captured by the underwater cameras will be shown during the conference. The initial bed profile before the 60cm solitary wave runs, and the resulting bed profile after 3 (Trial 3), 6 (Trial 6), and 9 (Trial 9) 60cm solitary waves (spaced 10-15 minutes apart) are shown in Fig. 4.

(c) wing unit

Fig. 1: Plan view (a) and elevation view (b) of the experimental setup for the tsunami scour experiment at NEES@OSU. Details of the optical back scatter sensors (OBS) and acoustic doppler velocimeters (ADV) mounted on the wing unit (magenta rectangles shown in (a) and (b)) are shown in (c). A combination of multiple transducer array (MTA), laser beam profiler (LBP) and hand surveys are used to survey the bed before and after the waves. All the drawings are taken from [8].

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155

For all the 60cm solitary wave runs, a plunging breaker initiated immediately after x=22m at approximately t=7.5s. After the wave broke (x=2425m), a bore with a height of ~20cm formed, which then climbed onshore with a maximum velocity of 2m/s. The wave reached its maximum runup at x=38.5m at t~13s, which followed immediately by wave drawdown with a maximum velocity of -2m/s. The wave drawdown reached the initial shoreline at t~15s, leading to a hydraulic jump and then set down. The drawdown wave continued to travel offshore until it was reflected back from the wave board at x=0m. The reflected wave reach x=23m at t~32s.

the pore pressure beneath the bed surface is higher than atmospheric due to phase lag caused by the diffusion process. The resulting upward seepage combined with reduced frictional stress between sand grains helped to enhance the particle mobility, which allowed the sediments to be easily transported by the flow. We call this phenomena enhanced sediment transport due to upward pore pressure flux as a result of wave-soil interactions. Nevertheless, sufficient shear is still needed to transport the loosened sediments. Figure 2 shows that the first sediment peak obtained by the bottom Optical Backscatter Sensor (OBS4) initiated immediately after the peak negative (seaward) velocity at t~19.5s, and the second sediment peak initiated immediately after the peak positive (landward) velocity at t~32s. The first sediment peak is larger than the second sediment peak due to the larger momentum and higher upward pore pressure flux of the first drawdown compared to the second runup (associated with the wave reflecting back from the wave maker). Consequently, more sediment is transported offshore during the drawdown than onshore, which is consistent with observations from the underwater cameras and the erosion/deposition patterns shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 2: Time histories of the wave surface profile (h8), nearbed axial flow velocity (V8), and sediment concentrations (C3 and C4) at x=23m, 4m seaward of the initial shoreline. Taken from [8]. Figure 2 shows that no sediment was detected at x=23m during the wave breaking process. Instead, majority of the sediment pickup occurred between 17s<t<35s, which is during the set down phase of the drawdown. This result is consistent with those shown in [7]. In addition, the maximum sediment pickup did not correlate with time instances with maximum flow velocity, but instead correlated with time instances with negative vertical pore pressure gradient (upward pore pressure flux), as shown in Fig. 3. Upward pore pressure flux developed near the shoreline because the bed surface pressure reduces to the atmospheric pressure due to the set down, while Fig. 3: Time histories of the wave surface profile (h12), normalized vertical (dp/dz) and horizontal (dp/dx) pore pressure gradients at the initial shoreline (x=27m). s= g(s-1) is the particle submerged weight and is the bed slope. Taken from [8]. Results from underwater videos also showed negligible pickup of the sediments in the wave breaking region, but the strong up-rush following the wave breaking did pushed substantial amount of sediments up the slope to above the shoreline.

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155

Nevertheless, as observed from the OBS measurements, the videos also showed that the most significant sediment transport occurred during the drawdown in the form of rapid sheet flow. The thickness of the sheet flow was observed to be more than two orders of magnitude larger than the mean grain diameter. After the hydraulic jump during the drawdown, an intense mobile sediment layer moving towards the sea was observed (from the underwater cameras at x=25m and x=27m) to rise with relatively uniform thickness by ~5cm then fell back to ~1cm higher than the initial bed between 17s<t<27s, the time period when the upward seepage is maximum (see Fig. 3). It is interesting to note that in the wave breaking region, the landward sediment transport is much more prominent for the reflected wave than for the initial wave. This is because the vertical pore pressure gradient is positive (compressing the soil) during the runup of the initial wave (t<13s) while the vertical pore pressure gradient is still negative (decompressing or lifting of the soil) during the runup of the reflected wave between 30s<t<35s. Hence, the soil can be more easily transported by the reflected wave even though the axial flow velocity was smaller than that of the initial wave due to enhanced sediment transport caused by wave-soil interactions.

being ~2-4cm per wave. Although the sand erosion and deposition patterns are consistent with results presented by [9], the maximum erosion and deposition depths did not varied linearly with the number of waves and the values were significantly less than those measured by [9]. The lower volume of transport is probably because our sand bed was more compacted than in [9] since we purposely compacted the sand and allowed time for the bed to soak and consolidate after initial filling of the basin to simulate more realistic conditions. The volume of sand eroded and deposited decreased with increasing number of waves because the bed becomes more compacted with increasing number of waves due to wave impact and shear-induced contraction of the sand. Nevertheless, equilibrium was not reached even after nine waves of the same magnitude for all the wave conditions. In addition, the measured void ratio distribution of the bed after all the wave runs suggest that the void ratio (e) near the shoreline (x=27m) and seaward of the breaking region (x<20m) remain relatively high (e~0.5-0.65) compared to the adjacent regions (e~0.3) [8]. In summary, this set of experimental studies clearly demonstrated the phenomena of enhanced sediment transport due to wave-induced pore pressure gradients in the seabed. The results showed the importance of including both shear stress and pore pressure gradients in tsunami sediment transport models. 3.2 Small-Scale Current and Wave Scour Study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa: The second set of experiments is funded by NSF CMMI grant no. 0649155 as part of the Enhanced Sediment Transport due to Transient Wave Loads project. It is currently being carried out at the 9.14m long x 0.15m wide x 0.38m deep wave flume with transparent sidewalls at the hydraulics lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The small scale of the experimental facility allows easy change of the particle grain size, as well as detailed flow field measurements using particle image velocimetry (PIV), both of which are very difficult to do with large-scale facilities. An overview of the experimental setup is shown in Figs. 5. This set of experimental studies was designed to complement the large-scale tsunami scour described in Section 3.1, which is limited to the use of natural, well-sorted, fine dune sand from Oregon. The goal of this experiment is to systematically study the effect of upward seepage on sediment transport due to current and/or short wave loads with varying bed slopes. Different sets of uniform grain size sand

Fig. 4: The initial bed profile before the 60cm solitary wave runs, and the resulting bed profile after 3 (Trial 3), 6 (Trial 6), and 9 (Trial 9) 60cm solitary waves (spaced 10-15 minutes apart). Taken from [8]. From Fig. 4, it can be observed that sand was eroded from above the shoreline, and was deposited in the wave breaking region. The length and depth of the erosion and deposition zone is approximately the same, with the maximum erosion and deposition each

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155

ranging from 0.1mm to 0.8mm will be used to investigate the effects of grain size (which influences the soil permeability and critical seepage rate) on enhanced sediment transport due to upward seepage under current and/or wave loads. The objective is to develop and validate a new transient sediment transport model that is applicable to both tsunamis and storm surges.

An example of the comparison between numerical predictions and experimental measurements by [9] is shown in Fig. 6, which showed good agreement in terms of the erosion and deposition regions, maximum erosion and deposition depths, and changes in bed profile with number of waves. Additional validation studies are underway using results from the two sets of experiments described in Section 3. It should be emphasized that this is the first model that has been developed that can predict transient tsunami-induced sediment transport and scour with consideration for wave-soil interaction. Additional work is underway to extend the model to predict sediment transport and scour due to storm surges.

Fig. 5: Experiment setup of the small scale current and wave scour study being conducted at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. 4. Numerical Simulations: Parallel to the experimental studies, we also developed a numerical transient sediment transport model to predict tsunami erosion/deposition. The model employs a hybrid Boussinesq equation solver to consider dispersion effects for the pre-breaking region, and a nonlinear shallow water equation solver for the post-breaking region, and is fully coupled with the convectiondiffusion equation for the sediment concentration. The model is able to compute the bed profile changes and transient sediment fluxes while considering the effects of fluid shear stress and horizontal pressure gradient at the bed surface, as well as submerged particle weight and pore pressure gradients in the underlying soil deposits. Currently, a 2-D pressure diffusion model is used to determine pore pressure variations in the soil, which assumes the soil skeleton to be incompressible. The numerical model has been validated against analytical, numerical, and experimental results [10].

Fig. 6: Comparison of the predicted (bottom left) to the measured (bottom right) bed profiles changes presented in [9] for eight positive solitary waves over an initial 1:12 slope (top left). The predicted wave profiles are shown in the top right drawing. The top left and bottom right figures are taken from [9]. 5. Conclusions: Two sets of experiments have been designed to study the dynamics of tsunami and storm surge induced sediment transport and scour. The largescale tsunami scour study has already been carried out this summer. The studies showed that plunging breakers led to turbulent suspension of sediments downstream of the wave breaking region, but majority of the sediment transport occurred during the wave drawdown due to enhanced sediment mobility as a result of upward pore pressure flux caused by wave-soil interactions. Consequently, positive solitary waves over a constant sloped fine sand beach lead to deposition in the breaking region, and erosion above the shoreline. The results suggest that the region near the shoreline is most susceptible to enhanced sediment transport due to pore pressure gradients generated by wave-soil interactions, which could potentially lead to soil failures such as fluidization, liquefaction, and slope instability. It should be emphasized that only a small portion of the experimental data from the tsunami scour study has

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155

been analyzed. Additional work is underway to study the influence of bathymetry (constant slope vs. reeftype bathymetry) and wave type (cnoidal vs. solitary wave) on wave runup and drawdown characteristics, soil response, and bed erosion and deposition patterns. In addition to the large-scale tsunami scour study, a complementary small-scale current and wave scour study has been designed and is currently being carried out. This study will help to improve the understanding of the effect of grain size and upward seepage on sediment transport under current and/or wave loads. Parallel to the experimental studies, a numerical transient sediment transport model has been developed to predict tsunami erosion and deposition. The numerical predictions showed good comparisons with experimental measurements by [9]. Additional validations studies with our own experiments are underway. The goal of this work is to develop simulation and design tools that will enable us to predict the magnitude and location of maximum scour due to tsunamis and storm surges, as well as identify locations where potential wave-induced soil failure may occur. 6. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge funding by the National Science Foundation through the NSF George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (grant no. 0530759) and through NSF CMMI grant no. 0649155. The authors would also like to thank Prof. Ian Robertson, Prof. Michelle Teng, and Dr. Gaur Johnson for their help in the preparation part of the experiments. The authors would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Prof. Solomon Yim and the staff at the O.H. Hinsdale Research Laboratory at Oregon State University, and Mr. Ting Tan, Mr. Steve Sun, and Mr. Dee Moronkeji for their help in carrying out the experiments.

7. References: [1] I.N. Robertson, H.R. Riggs, S. Yim, and Y.L. Young, Lessons from Katrina, ASCE Civil Engineering Magazine, v. 76, no. 4, April 2006. [2] I.N. Robertson, H.R. Riggs, S. Yim, and Y.L. Young, Lessons from Hurricane Katrina storm surge on bridges and buildings, Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, vol. 133, pp. 463-483, 2007. [3] I.N. Robertson, S. Yim, H.R. Riggs, and Y.L. Young, Coastal bridge performance during Hurricane Katrina, 3rd International Conference on Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation, Cape Town, South Africa, Sept. 9-12, 2007. [4] H. Oumeraci, Review and analysis of vertical breakwater failures lessons learned, Coastal Engineering, vol. 22, 3-29, 1994. [5] M.B. deGroot, M. Kudella, P. Meijers, and H. Oumeraci, Liquefaction phenomena underneath marine gravity structures subjected to wave loads, Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, vol. 132, pp. 325-335, 2006. [6] D.S. Jeng, Wave-induced sea floor dynamics, Applied Mechanical Review, vol. 56, pp. 407-429, 2003. [7] S. Tonkin, H. Yeh, F. Kato, and S. Sato, Tsunami scour around a cylinder, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 496, pp. 165-192, 2003. [8] Y.L. Young, H. Xiao, and T. Maddux, Physical modeling of tsunami erosion and deposition, Journal of Geophysical Research, submitted, 2007. [9] N. Kobayashi and A. Lawrence, Cross-shore sediment transport under breaking solitary waves, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 109, C03047:113, 2004. [10] T. Ting, H. Xiao, and Y.L. Young, Runup and Drawdown Models for Solitary Waves, Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, submitted, 2007.

Proceedings of 2008 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee

Grant #0530759 and #0649155