Development of a large-scale laboratory facility for sediment transport research

Abstract : This report documents the development and initial applications of the Large-scale Sediment Transport Facility (LSTF), which is located at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL), Vicksburg, MS. The LSTF was built to facilitate basic and applied research in the field of coastal sediment transport processes. Work reported here was fluided by Work Unit 32870 "Large-Scale Laboratory Investigation of Longshore Sediment Transport," which is under the Coastal Sedimentation and Dredging Program, General Investigations Research and Development Program, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A large-scale facility for investigating nearshore and surf zone sediment transport processes has been constructed and successfully applied. This facility provides the Corps of Engineers with a capability for studying longshore sand transport at scales that are much larger than the scales at which previous laboratory research has been conducted to examine these processes. The LSTF is state-of-the-art in terms of the systems that have been built for generating relatively large-scale laboratory waves, pumping and recirculating the longshore current, measuring the quantity of sand that moves along the beach, and a fully programmable instrumentation bridge and data acquisition system that includes 10 ADV current sensors, 10 capacitance-type wave gauges, four FOBS arrays, and an automated beach profiling system. All facility components were designed to maximize accuracy of data acquired in movable-bed experiments and minimize the amount of human labor (and time) required to perform them. The LSTF has proven to be an excellent and robust facility and, so far, has yielded unprecedented measurements of surf zone sediment transport processes in a laboratory setting, including sand transported in suspension. The potential for making R&D advancements through the use of the facility is quite high.