Non-invasive measurements to analyze sandy bed evolution under sea waves action

"Sea ripples" and "scour" represent topics of great interest both in oceanic and coastal engineering for the important role they play in problems such as coastal erosion and offshore platform structural stability. Experimental analyses of these processes require complex and highly noninvasive measurement strategies, and, in fact, only very few results are known in this field while theoretical models are largely studied. In this paper, a contactless measurement methodology based on artificial vision systems and structured light is presented that allows performing accurate experimental measurement on these processes and, therefore, characterization and validation of theoretical models. The measurement approach proposed here is also suitable for the analysis of the dynamic behaviors of the process. The latter represents a significant peculiarity of this work. In fact, it has been largely exploited here, together with a suitable experimental setup, for obtaining a large set of measurements of primary importance for deriving novel analytic results and design relations.