1 Introduction to the 



SUPERTANK Laboratory 

 Data Collection Project 1 



Introduction 



The design of beaches to protect against storm erosion, flooding, and wave 

 attack requires quantitative prediction of cross-shore hydrodynamics, sediment 

 transport, and beach profile change. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

 (USACE) has pursued laboratory studies on beach erosion since the founding 

 of the Beach Erosion Board (BEB) in 1930, the predecessor of the present 

 coastal engineering research arm of the USACE, the Coastal Engineering Re- 

 search Center (CERC), located at the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experi- 

 ment Station. 



In the early 1930s, the BEB designed a wave basin and conducted a series 

 of laboratory experiments to examine the action of waves incident normal to 

 an initial, approximately one to seven sloping sand beach, with and without 

 tides (BEB 1936). The experiments were conducted in a basin approximately 

 6 m long and 4 m wide. (The terminology "basin" implies that both 

 longshore and cross-shore processes can be modeled.) In the experiments, 

 water elevation, waves, surface and bottom currents, and beach profile change 

 were recorded. The evolution of numerous three-dimensional morphologic 

 beach features found in the field were qualitatively reproduced and discussed, 

 including berms, scarps, break-point bars and troughs, and channels that 

 would now be termed rip-current channels. A summary of one aspect of the 

 first four experiments in the series states "The results indicated that normal 

 weather conditions tend to move the offshore sand toward the beach while 

 storm conditions caused erosion of the beach and the formation of an offshore 

 bar" (BEB 1936). The USACE thereafter conducted numerous small-scale 

 laboratory experiments on beach profile change produced by wave action, and 

 a review of these and other laboratory and field studies performed worldwide 

 may be found in Larson and Kraus (1989). 



Written by Nicholas C. Kraus and Jane McKee Smith, Coastal Engineering Research Center, 

 U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station. 



Chapter 1 Introduction to SUPERTANK 



