PREDICTING COASTAL ROADWAY DAMAGE USING MODIFIED DISPERSION FUNCTIONS

Empirical dispersion functions appear to reasonably predict damage risks for coastal roadways subjected to coastal storm surge and wave hazards. County Road 257 (CR 257) in Brazoria County, Texas had significant damage at various locations during Hurricane Ike in September 2008. Cumulative peak hourly water surface elevation, wave period, and current velocity output from a hindcast ADCIRC+SWAN model was assessed using modified celerity dispersion functions relative to measured distance between road and shoreline. These intensity measures provide a strongly correlated model for predicting likelihood of road damage.

On the Dynamics of Two-Dimensional Capillary-Gravity Solitary Waves with a Linear Shear Current

The numerical study of the dynamics of two-dimensional capillary-gravity solitary waves on a linear shear current is presented in this paper. The numerical method is based on the time-dependent conformal mapping. The stability of different kinds of solitary waves is considered. Both depression wave and large amplitude elevation wave are found to be stable, while small amplitude elevation wave is unstable to the small perturbation, and it finally evolves to be a depression wave with tails, which is similar to the irrotational capillary-gravity waves.

The Behaviors of Internal Solitary Waves near the Continental Shelf of South China Sea Inferred from Satellite Images

The behaviors of internal solitary waves (ISWs) near the continental shelf of SCS are analyzed. We interpret manifestations of four kinds of ISWs in MODIS images: mode-1 depression wave, bolus, mode-1 elevation wave, and mode-2 convex wave. The geographical distributions of these ISWs are investigated. Bolus and mode-1 elevation wave, the two evolution stages of polarity conversion process of depression ISW, only exists around 22˚N, which is in agreement with the sign of mode-1 nonlinear coefficient α1. The mode-2 convex waves generally follow the southern part of mode-1 depression ISW, where the steep terrain favors their generation. The information of a mode-1 depression ISW, such as amplitude and propagation speed, is also derived from the MODIS image.