Littoral transport estimate from the field measurement along north chennai coast of tamil nadu, india

Among the hard measures to combat coastal erosion, construction of groin fields remain as one of the most widely adopted. The groin field has been increasingly adopted for the Indian coast. As it is important to understand its effectiveness in taming the waves and the alongshore currents, which are the driving force of the littoral drift, it is essential to monitor the behavior of the hydrodynamic characteristics of the wave and the flow field within a groin field after its implementation. In this paper, the results from a preliminary exercise of the measurement and analysis of the wave and flow fields in a groin field north of the major port of Chennai along the South East coast of India are presented and discussed. An attempt to derive the sediment transport rate from the measured parameters using the energy flux method is made. The predicted sediment transport rates are compared with measurements from a field study that adopted a sand trap for the said purpose.