Assessment of a combination between hard structures and sand nourishment eastern of Damietta harbor using numerical modeling

Damietta harbor was constructed in 1982 as an inland harbor with its 15m depth navigation channel and two jetties acting like an obstacle to not allow sediment deposition in the harbor. On the other hand, they significantly affect the northern coast shoreline and hinder the sediment circulation in Damietta promontory. Satellite images show that new headlands are being implemented in the coastal shores of As-senaneyah. The proposed project consists of implementation of four headlands with length of 160m, spacing of 400m and using 150,000m3 nourishment in those spacing between the hard structures only once during the construction time. Litpack 1D-model is used to predict shoreline responses to number of different five scenarios considered as combination between hard structures such as headlands and sand nourishment. A total number of 32 profiles were used to assess the shoreline changes along Gamasa, Damietta and Ras El-bar resort from 2010 to 2015. This study prevails a high erosion rate of the eastern and western shorelines of the proposed headlands. Nourishment of 200,000m3/year is found to be a reasonable solution due to simplicity of being attained from Damietta harbor’s annual dredged materials which was reported to be average of 1millionm3/year.