Effect of coral cell on beach deformation by 3-D hydraulic model experiment

Abstract

Recently, coastal environmental pollution is getting serious. Among these, beach erosion has great a significant impact. These coastal structures are made to minimize the loss of sand beach. For this reason, submerged breakwater has been indiscriminately constructed that is planned throughout south korea. In order to prevent erosion, some advanced countries have been installed submerged breakwater or breakwater. Despite of its purpose to keep the shoreline of the beach, it has a quite a few problems. In addition, the purpose of utilizing the space of the marine leisure users does not like that because of the disconnection of the sea using sea space. These methods have resulted in a further erosion of the beach. Therefore, in this study, we propose to develop a economical method of artificial coral cell model that can mitigate degree rate of beach erosion and improve coastal environments without installing the submerged breakwater or breakwater for the maintenance. We compared and analyzed the topographic changes of the artificial coral reef method and the these methods through the 3-D hydraulic experiment. As a result of the experiment, we confirmed the superiority of the deformation effect of the coral cell over submerged breakwater, it demonstrated the effectiveness of prevention of loss of sand and improvement of water quality.