2.5. Wave-induced forces on corals
Wave loads on submerged corals arise from three forces; a drag force from flow separation around the coral body (and some skin friction), lift forces from flow over curved surfaces and inertia forces arising from the pressure gradient across the coral induced by the wave motion. The drag force is expected to be dominant for slender coral bodies, i.e. branching type corals, whereas the inertia force is expected to be dominant for large coral bodies, i.e. massive coral species. Lift forces for branching corals are expected to be small given their geometric shape. For massive corals, Massel and Done (1993) suggest the lift force is an order of magnitude smaller than the inertia force. This influence of the coral diameter on wave forces leads to a different impact from SLR for different coral species. Since the lift force is expected to be small for both branching and massive corals and does not contribute significantly to generating bending moments or shear on the coral skeleton (Massel and Done, 1993), the total wave induced forces on different species of coral were estimated by treating coral sections as simple cylinders (c.f Storlazzi et al., 2005), and estimating the maximum total wave induced force per unit length, FT. In this simplified approach, cylinders represent the whole assemblage of massive corals and the individual branches of branching corals. The lift and inertia forces are 90° out of phase, so the maximum force is not the sum of the two individual forces. A simple analytical expression is adopted for the total maximum force, from Dean and Dalrymple (1991):