ANNUAL DATA SUMMARY FOR 1983 

 CERC FIELD RESEARCH FACILITY 



PART I: INTRODUCTION 



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

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

 on 176 acres* at Duck, N. C. (Figure 1), consists of a 56l-m-long research 

 pier, an accompanying office, and field support buildings. The FRF is near 

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

 extending south from Rudee Inlet, Va,, to Oregon Inlet, N. C. It is bordered 

 by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Currituck Sound to the west. The Facil- 

 ity 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 its 

 adjacent region. 



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

 0.9-ni-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 mean sea 

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

 collars and against corrosion by a cathodic system. 



3. An FRF Measurements and Analysis (FRFMA) program has been estab- 

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

 reduce and analyze these data, and publish the results. 



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

 rizes the data collected during 1983. Data for previous years are summarized 

 by Miller (1982 and 1984) and Miller et al. (1985 and 1986). 



* A table of factors for converting non-SI units of measurement to SI 

 (metric) units is presented on page 9. 



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