ANNUAL DATA SUMMARY FOR 1990 

 CERC FIELD RESEARCH FACILITY 



PART I: INTRODUCTION 



Background 



1. The US Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES), Coastal 

 Engineering Research Center's (CERC's) Field Research Facility (FRF), located 

 on 0.7 km 2 at Duck, NC (Figure 1), consists of a 561-m-long research pier and 

 accompanying office and field support buildings. The FRF is located near the 

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

 ing south of Rudee Inlet, VA, to Oregon Inlet, NC . The FRF 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 complement labora- 

 tory 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-diam steel piles spaced 12.2 m apart along the pier's 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 wide and extends from behind the dune- 

 line to about the 6— m water depth contour at a height of 7.8 m above the 

 National Geodetic Vertical Datum (NGVD) . The pilings are protected against 

 sand abrasion by concrete erosion collars and against corrosion by a cathodic 

 system. 



3. An FRF Measurements and Analysis 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, which summarizes data for 1990, continues a series of 

 reports begun in 1977. 



