ANNUAL DATA SUMMARY FOR 1980, CERC FIELD RESEARCH FACILITY 



PART I: INTRODUCTION 



1. The U. S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station Coastal Engi- 

 neering Research Center's (CERC) Field Research Facility (FRF) located on 

 176 acres" at Duck, North Carolina (Figure 1), consists of a 56l-m-long re- 

 search pier and an accompanying office building. The FRF is located near the 

 middle of Currituck Spit along a 100-kni unbroken stretch of shoreline extend- 

 ing south from Rudee Inlet in Virginia to Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. It 



is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Currituck Sound to the west. 

 The Facility is designed to (a) provide a rigid platform from which waves, 

 currents, water levels, and bottom elevations can be measured, especially 

 during severe storms; (b) provide CERC with field experience and data to com- 

 plement laboratory and analytical studies and numerical models; (c) provide 

 a manned field facility for testing new instrumentation; and (d) serve as a 

 permanent field base of operations for physical and biological studies of the 

 site and adjacent region. 



2. The research pier is a reinforced concrete structure supported on 

 0.9-m-diameter steel piles spaced 12.2 m apart along the pier length and 4.6 m 

 apart across the width. The piles are embedded approximately 20 m below the 

 ocean bottom. The pier deck is 6.1 m v;ide and extends from behind the dune 

 line to about the 6-m water depth contour at a height of 7.8 m above mean sea 

 level. The pilings are protected against sand abrasion by concrete erosion 

 collars and against corrosion by a cathodic system. 



3. A FRF Measurements and Analysis (FRFMA) program has been established 

 to collect basic oceanographic and meteorological data at the site, reduce and 

 analyze these data, and publish the results. 



4. This report is the second in a series of annual reports and summa- 

 rizes the data collected during 1980. It is organized such that descriptions 

 of the instrumentation, including sensor calibration and maintenance (Part III) 

 and data collection and analysis procedures (Part IV) precede reporting of the 



A table of factors for converting inch-pound units of measurement to 

 metric (SI) units is presented on page 5. 



