Longshore current on an equilibrium beach.

Abstract

Natural beaches tend to be concave-up rather than planar and are reasonable to be modeled by an equilibrium beach profile. A governing equation for longshore current on an equilibrium beach is derived and its analytical solution is given in this paper. Through comparisons of the present solution and field data of longshore current for a step-type beach, the present solution is found to have fairly agreeable prediction to longshore current inside the surf zone. The effects of the shape of a concave-up beach and turbulent mixing stress on longshore current inside the surf zone are discussed in the present paper.