Coarse particles' threshold of motion under shoaling waves

The threshold of motion of coarse particles under regular shoaling waves is studied. Experiments are performed to investigate the effects of bed fluid acceleration on coarse particle stability. By varying wave height, wave period and water depth, combinations of similar peak orbital velocities and weak to strong intra-wave accelerations were created. Qualitatively we found that initiation of motion occurs at or is very close to the maximum shear stress due to the combined effects of drag/lift and acceleration as introduced by Nielsen and Callaghan (2003). However, quantitatively their formulation does not lead to convincing discrimination between motion and no motion. We expect this to be due to the assumption that the coefficients for drag/lift and acceleration in their formulation are taken equal and constant. From literature and from plotting our data against the Keulegan-Carpenter number we expect that these coefficients strongly vary due to flow separation effects.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience