Wave-driven Groundwater Flows in Sandy Beaches: A Richards Equation-based Model

Jean-Baptiste Clément (1, 2) , Damien Sous (3, 2) , Frederic Golay (1) , Mehmet Ersoy (1)

1 IMATH - Institut de Mathématiques de Toulon - EA 2134
2 MIO - Institut méditerranéen d'océanologie
3 SIAME - Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Ingénieur Appliquées à la Mécanique et au génie Electrique

A groundwater model is developed to simulate flows under the swash zone of sandy beach. Variably saturated beach is described by Richards equation, which is solved by the Rivage code thanks to a discontinuous Galerkin method. The SWASH code is used to simulate wave propagation in nearshore waters and compute suitable boundary conditions at the beachface to force Richards equation. An idealized case is considered to investigate the beach groundwater response to the action of swash cycles associated with long IG-like waves: infiltration/ exfiltration, water table, hydraulic head and pore velocities are outlined. A good qualitative agreement is found with observations from experimental studies in the literature.

Mots clés: numerical modelling; forced coupling; seepage; swash zone; Groundwater

Domaines: Océanographie; Hydrologie; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Jean-Baptiste Clément, Damien Sous, Frederic Golay, Mehmet Ersoy. Wave-driven Groundwater Flows in Sandy Beaches: A Richards Equation-based Model. Journal of Coastal Research, 2020, Proceedings from the 16th International Coastal Symposium, Special issue 95, pp.1047-1051. ⟨10.2112/SI95-204.1⟩. ⟨hal-02899299⟩