Effects of Shell Hash on Friction Angles of Surficial Seafloor Sediments near Oysters
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 148, Issue 5
Abstract
Oysters are hypothesized to affect the shear strength of nearby surficial seafloor sediment as fragments of oyster shells (shell hash) are typically more angular relative to sand particles alone, among other differences. Resistance to shearing is well characterized by the friction angle, which is estimated in this study from vacuum triaxial laboratory and portable free-fall penetrometer field tests. Friction angles of sediment with shell hash were higher relative to those of sediment without shell hash (via hydrochloric acid treatment) on average by about 19% (36.0°–30.2°, respectively). Triaxial confining pressures ranged between 2.1 and 49.0 kPa to simulate subtidal and intertidal aquatic conditions. Regularity (average of particle roundness and sphericity) values of sediment samples with shell hash were found to be less than those of samples without by about 6% (0.66 and 0.70, respectively), which indicates the particle shapes of the former are, overall, more angular and less spherical. Further study and methodology improvements are needed to decrease the approximate 9° friction angle discrepancy estimated from field- and laboratory-based tests. Knowing oysters have the potential to increase sediment shearing resistance helps establish a pathway of how shellfish colonies may contribute to mitigating surficial erosion around coastal infrastructure.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation through grants CMMI-1820848 and CMMI-1820842. The authors thank Melody Thomas, Liz Smith, Matthew Campbell, Peter Mewis, Julie Paprocki, Paul Richardson, Brandon Puckett, and Paula Gillikin for fieldwork assistance. In addition to the fieldwork help, the authors also thank the graduate students in the coastal and marine geotechnics team and A.J. Prussin at Virginia Tech for laboratory and editorial aid. The authors also acknowledge Bruce Hatcher for helping to review this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers and the associated editor whose comments contributed to the improvement of this article.
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Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 148 • Issue 5 • September 2022
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Received: Feb 21, 2021
Accepted: Apr 2, 2022
Published online: Jun 29, 2022
Published in print: Sep 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Nov 29, 2022
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