Observation and measurement of the bottom boundary layer flow in the prebreaking zone of shoaling waves

In this paper, the characteristics of the bottom boundary layer flow induced by nonlinear, asymmetric shoaling waves, propagating over a smooth bed of 1/15 uniform slope, is experimentally investigated. Flow visualization technique with thin-layered fluorescent dye was first used to observe the variation of the flow structure, and a laser Doppler velocimeter was then employed to measure the horizontal velocity, U.The bottom boundary layer flow is found to be laminar except within a small region near the breaking point. The vertical distribution of the phase-averaged velocity U at each phase is non-uniform, which is directly affected by the mean velocity, . The magnitude of increases from zero at the bottom to a local positive maximum at about z/δ2.02.5 (where z is the height above the sloping bottom and δ is the Stokes layer thickness), then decreases gradually to zero at z/δ6.07.0 approximately, and finally becomes negative as z/δ increases further. Moreover, as waves propagate towards shallower water, the rate of increase in the maximum onshore oscillating velocity component is greater than that of the offshore counterpart except near the breaking point. The free stream velocities in the profiles of the maximum onshore and offshore oscillating velocity components, and are found to appear at z/δ≥6.0. This implies that, if the Stokes layer thickness is used as a length scale, the non-dimensionalized boundary layer thickness remains constant in the pre-breaking zone. Although is greater than and the asymmetry of the maximum free stream velocities (i.e. ) increases with decrease of water depth, a universal similar profile can be established by plotting z/δ versus ( ) or ( ). The final non-dimensional profile is symmetric and unique for the distributions of the maximum onshore and offshore oscillating velocity components within the bottom boundary layer, which are induced by nonlinear, asymmetric shoaling waves crossing the pre-breaking zone.