Author(s): N. Tahvildari; J. M. Kaihatu
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: Patches of cohesive sediments cause significant attenuation of surface waves in coastal areas due to the interaction between surface waves and muddy sea bed. Knowledge of mud characteristics, its behavior, and the mechanism of the interaction thus enables us to better predict the wave propagation over muddy coasts. Various material rheologies have been proposed to explain the mud behavior under forcing from waves and each rheology seem to be in accordance with some data, but yet a single rheology has not been successful in explaining mud behavior in different wave forcing conditions. In addition, direct field measurement of mud characteristics such as mud depth and viscosity is laborious, so the ability to deduce them from available remote sensing data would be useful. In this paper, a nonlinear least square method is used to inversely obtain the mud parameters from estimates of surface wave energy, provided at present by the output of a numerical wave model. The mud layer is assumed to be a thin, viscous fluid, though the method is independent of the assumptions concerning the mud layer. It is shown that the optimization technique is able to determine the mud parameters which are consistent with the data.
Year: 2009