Application of science to secure the integrity of seawalls

The maximum depth of toe scour is a particularly important for the design of dune revetments and seawalls which will increase in importance with site specific climate change impacts. Toe scour adjacent to seawalls has also been a major cause for concern amongst coastal communities where seawalls have been proposed or constructed.

This webinar presents a method of estimating maximum toe scour under breaking waves and offers case studies at Narrabeen Beach in Sydney, Wamberal Beach on the NSW Central Coast and Belongil Spit on the Far North Coast at Byron Bay where, at all three beaches, dune revetments and seawalls currently are under design and construction.

For typical severe storm characteristics used for design in New South Wales the method yielded scour levels of some - 2.5 m to - 3.5 m AHD, which results appeared reasonable for those locations, albeit lower than those commonly being adopted. The sensitivity of these results to variations of various input parameters is examined.

Speaker

Lex Nielsen FIEAust CPEng NER RPEQ APECEng IntEng(Aus)
Principal Consultant – Advisian

Lex Nielsen is Technical Director for coastal engineering matters in Advisian’s Australia East office. Lex has some 50 years of professional experience in all aspects of coastal and estuarine hydrodynamics, beach erosion, sediment transport, shoreline evolution, coastal zone management, structural analysis and design of coastal and maritime structures. He discourses regularly in technical journals and presents at a range of technical meetings.