Wave attenuation by flexible vegetation

Coastal vegetation has a well-known effect of attenuating waves; however, quantifiable measures of attenuation for general wave and vegetation scenarios are not well known. On the plant scale, there are extensive studies in predicting the dynamics of a single plant in an oscillatory flow. On the coastal scale however, there are yet to be compact models which capture the dynamics of both the flow and vegetation, when the latter exists in the form of a dense canopy along the bed. In this talk, we will discuss the open questions in the field and the modelling approaches involved. In particular, we investigate how micro-scale effects can be homogenised in space and how periodic motions can be averaged in time.