ANNUAL DATA SUMMARY FOR 1986 

 CERC FIELD RESEARCH FACILITY 



PART I: INTRODUCTION 

 Background 



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

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

 712,250 square metres at Duck, NC (Figure 1), consists of a 561-m-long re- 

 search 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 extending 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 com- 

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

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

 manent 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 1986, continues a series of 

 annual reports begun in 1980. 



