Effect of Coastal Forest on Solitary Breaking Waves Force Absorption in Sloping Coasts

Abstract

Every year, natural disasters and catastrophes such as hurricanes and tsunamis cause coasts destruction and bring irreparable damages to the life and properties of people. Recent approaches of coastal protection are based on environmental balance and stabilization. the new method of coastal protection is planting coastal forest lines known as green belt. Coastal green belt confronting toward coastal protection and damage reduction is through increasing the resistance to incoming wave to the coast and absorbing part of its force. Hence, the aim of present study is to investigate the effect of coastal vegetation density on variations of destructive solitary breaking waves force and drag coefficient of coastal forest. To this purpose, a sloping coast and a coastal vegetation model were installed in a flume equipped with a frictionless force measurement system. The experiments were conducted in four different coast slopes in both with coastal vegetation and without coastal vegetation model (three coastal vegetation density). The results indicated that the presence of coastal green belt reduce the destructive force of the waves to about 60 percent on average.

Keywords

• coastal green belt
• tsunami
• breaking wave
• wave force absorption
• sloping coast