WAVE-FLUME EXPERIMENTS OF DISSIPATING WAVES ON SOFT MUD

Abstract

A series of laboratory wave-flume experiments was conducted to investigate the dissipation of monochromatic regular waves on a horizontal muddy bed of commercial kaolinite. The rheological parameters of kaolinite samples with different water content ratios were obtained from controlled shear rate tests using the rheometer. The flow curves of shear stress versus shear rate were found to be essentially Bingham viscoplastic medium for steady unidirectional mud flows of the rheological tests. Assuming Bingham behavior for kaolinite, a wave-mud interaction model was employed to obtain the values of the wave attenuation coefficients. Comparisons between the measured and simulated results show a good agreement.