RESPONSE OF POSIDONIA OCEANICA TO WAVE MOTION IN SHALLOW-WATERS - PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Luca Cavallaro, Carlo Lo Re, Giovanni Paratore, Antonino Viviano, Enrico Foti

Abstract


Aim of the present work is to contribute to the knowledge about the interaction between the flow induced by wave and the aquatic vegetation. More in details the results of preliminary tests of an experimental laboratory investigation about the response of a Posidonia Oceanica meadow to wave motion in shallow waters is reported. A wide attention was posed to the behavior of a synthetic plants with plastic material. To this aim an image acquisition technique was used to analyze and compare the movement of both the artificial plant and the real one. The experiments carried out about the interaction between the artificial meadow and the waves showed a significant wave dumping, in particular in the case of plants having the same length of the water depth.

Keywords


Posidonia Oceanica; canopy; wave; drag force; wave dumping

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