A VERIFICATION OF STATIC-EQUILIBRIUM PARABOLIC FORMULATION AT THE PROTECTED SHORELINE OF PIZZO CALABRO, IN THE SOUTH OF ITALY

The present paper considers data from field observations on shoreline response of curved plan form beaches behind detached coastal protection rubble mound structures. The most widely used static equilibrium parabolic formulations (Hsu and Evans, 1989; Gonzàlez and Medina, 2001) have been adopted to determine whether a tombolo/salient is formed and, secondly, the morphological characteristics of the fully developed beach as a function of the breakwater length, 2B, the distance between the offshore breakwater and the final equilibrium shoreline position, Y, and the wave length, L. These formulations have been tested and verified against a set of available field data from the observations at the protected shoreline of Pizzo Calabro, along the Tyrrhenian coast, in the south of Italy. The field data are also considered to verify the relationship proposed by Ming and Chiew (2000) relating the sand deposition area behind the structure, A, to 2B and the distance between the offshore breakwater and the initial shoreline, X.