Investigation of breaking and non-breaking solitary waves and measurements of swash zone dynamics on a 5° beach

This study presents an experimental investigation of plunging breakers on a sloping beach with an inclination of 5.1 degrees. The incident waves are solitary waves with various amplitudes from non-breaking waves to plunging breakers, and the area investigated is the swash zone. PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) is performed on images captured at four different field of views (FOV). Shoreline position and maximum runup are measured, and are repeatable in both time and height, although cross-sectional variations of the shoreline shape are observed at maximum runup. For non-breaking waves the runup and fluid flow is computed by a boundary integral technique combined with a boundary layer model. Then, there is excellent agreement between the experimental and the computed velocity profiles at the lower region of the beach, while the boundary integral technique overpredicts the maximum runup height severely. For breaking waves the experiments indicate that the motion becomes more irregular as we move further up the beach. In addition, there are more irregularities present for waves with larger amplitude. Length and velocity of air bubbles entrapped by the plunging breakers are extracted from an image series captured with a large FOV. The images showed that a large air bubble remains intact for a time period during runup for the breaking waves.