ANNUAL DATA SUMMARY FOR 1982 
CERC FIELD RESEARCH FACILITY 
PART I: INTRODUCTION 
1. The US Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) Coastal En- 
gineering Research Center's (CERC's) Field Research Facility (FRF) located on 
176 acres* at Duck, N. C. (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 ex- 
tending 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 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 adja- 
cent 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 National 
Geodetic Vertical Datum (NGVD). The pilings are protected against sand abra- 
sion 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, re- 
duce and analyze these data, and publish the results. 
4, This report, the fourth in a series of annual reports, summarizes 
the data collected during 1982. Data for 1977-79 are summarized in Miller 
(1982), for 1980 in Miller (1984), and for 1981 in Miller, et al. (1985). De- 
scriptions of the instrumentation, including sensor calibration and mainte- 
nance (Part III) and data collection and analysis procedures (Part IV) 
* A table of factors for converting non-SI units of measurement to SI 
(metric) units is presented on page 8. 
