Swash

Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in cross-shore sediment exchange. The time-scale of swash motion varies from seconds to minutes depending on the type of beach (see Figure 1 for beach types). Greater swash generally occurs on flatter beaches. The swash motion plays the primary role in the formation of morphological features and their changes in the swash zone. The swash action also plays an important role as one of the instantaneous processes in wider coastal morphodynamics.

There are two approaches that describe swash motions: (1) swash resulting from the collapse of high-frequency bores (

f

>

0.05

H

z

{\displaystyle f>0.05\,\mathrm {Hz} }

) on the beachface; and (2) swash characterised by standing, low-frequency (

f

<

0.05

H

z

{\displaystyle f<0.05\,\mathrm {Hz} }

) motions. Which type of swash motion prevails is dependent on the wave conditions and the beach morphology and this can be predicted by calculating the surf similarity parameter

ϵ

b

{\displaystyle \epsilon _{b}}

(Guza & Inman 1975):

ϵ

b

=

4

π

2

H

b

2

g

T

2

tan

2

⁡

(

β

)

{\displaystyle \epsilon _{b}={\frac {4\pi ^{2}H_{b}}{2gT^{2}\tan ^{2}{(\beta )}}}}

in which

H

b

{\displaystyle H_{b}}

is the breaker height,

g

{\displaystyle g}

is gravity,

T

{\displaystyle T}

is the incident-wave period and

tan

⁡

(

β

)

{\displaystyle \tan {(\beta )}}

is the beach gradient. Values

ϵ

b

>

20

{\displaystyle \epsilon _{b}>20}

indicate dissipative conditions where swash is characterised by standing long-wave motion. Values

ϵ

b

<

2.5

{\displaystyle \epsilon _{b}<2.5}

indicate reflective conditions where swash is dominated by wave bores.