Do longshore bars shelter the shore?

Abstract

In most past theories on Bragg reflection of waves by a finite patch of rigid bars, only outgoing waves are allowed on the transmission side, simulating the effect of an idealized shoreline where all the incident wave energy is consumed by breaking. In these theories the amplitudes of both the incident and reflected waves are found to decrease monotonically over the bar patch in the shoreward direction. This result has motivated the idea of artificially constructing bars to protect a beach from incident waves. However, some numerical calculations have suggested that this tendency does not always hold when there is some reflection from the shore. We show here that with finite reflection by the shoreline the spatial distribution of wave energy over the patch can indeed be reversed, indicating that the mechanism can increase the hazards to the beach. The phase relation between the bars and the shoreline reflection is found to be the key to this qualitative change of wave response.