STABILITY OF A NOURISHED BEACH UNDER NON STATIONARY SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT TIME SERIES: AN APPLICATION

This paper deals with the stability, in the time domain, of a beach nourishment project. For regular waves the Dean's and Boccotti's approaches may be applied to analyze the planform evolution, for given initial condition. Both these approaches were generalized for random ocean waves by Arena, who proposed an expression of the longshore diffusivity as a function of the parameters of the sea state. In the paper, the evolution of a beach nourishment in a location on the coast of the Italian peninsula is considered, strating from the non stationary wave climate in deep water. The comparison between the Boccotti's and the Dean's approaches, for random waves, shows that the latter consevative: the withdrawal of the nourished beach is faster if Dean's approach is considered.