CMOR 417: Coastal morphology

Lecture notes

Lecture slides in Vietnamese featuring the following main topics:

  • Classification of coasts
  • Coastal dynamic processes
  • Longshore sediment transport & coastal accretion/erosion
  • Cross-shore sediment transport & beach profile changes
  • Modelling shoreline changes
  • Design concepts of coastal structures

Most slides were compiled by Assoc. Prof. Tran Thanh Tung.

Exercises

Various exercises are available to check the learners' understanding. The students are expected to interpret the results for their calculations.

Extra

An empirical study on wave run-up and dune erosion was presented in the paper by Suanez et al. (2015) "Observations and predictions of wave runup, extreme water levels, and medium-term dune erosion during storm conditions". A method on modelling medium-term beach changes was described by Pender and Karunarathna (2013) in the paper "A statistical-process based approach for modelling beach profile variability". The bilingual (English-Vietnamese) files are to help native students better understand the material.

Project

In this capstone project the students have to simulate the evolution of a sandy coastline. Waves are responsible for the littoral sediment transport and shoreline change. A one-dimensional numerical model (an earlier version of ShorelineS) is used, where the data include the shoreline position, the cross-shore profile, the wave climate, and other parameters. Through the project, students have a chance to develop their skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and groupwork.