• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.247-258
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• 2014

To evaluate the influence of the external force components on the littoral currents in the Gusipo beach, Jeonbuk, West Coast of Korea where a wide tidal sand flat developed, a coupled hydrodynamic model considered real time tidal currents and wave-induced currents was constructed in which the EFDC for tides and tidal currents, the SWAN for waves and the SHORECIRC for wave-induced currents were used as the hindcasting models. A series of field observations for tides, tidal currents and incident waves were carried out and especially to observe the littoral currents in the tidal sand flat, the GPS mounted and light weight drogues were used. Also wind data were collected from the adjacent weather station. To analyze the littoral current components, the numerical drogue tracking results considered real time winds, tides and waves were compared with the field drogue data. The drift speed of numerical drogues was reproduced as the range of 68.0~105.2% compared with the field data and the velocity error of main direction component showed a good result as -16.7~10.0%. As a result, in the mild slope tidal flat including wide surf zone, the tides and winds were the major affection component of the littoral currents, on the other hand, the wave-induced currents seemed the minor component when the incident wave heights were relatively small.