Long-Term Equilibrium Beach Profile Based on Maximum Information Entropy Concept

Abstract

This paper presents an application of the maximum information entropy concept to formulate an equilibrium beach profile (EBP) associated with the long-term beach evolution. The model assumes the beach profile is monotonic from a maximum depth at an offshore location to the runup limit or the berm level at the shoreline. The derived equilibrium beach profile has a logarithmic shape in terms of the cross-shore distance and can be either concave or convex depending on the profile shape parameters. If only the underwater portion of the profile is considered, the new EBP in nondimensional form matches the well known 2/3 power profile with the shape parameter