Alongshore sediment bypassing rocky headlands remains understudied despite the importance of characterizing littoral processes for erosion abatement, beach management, and climate change adaptation. This paper presents a numerical model sediment transport study to identify controlling factors and mechanisms for sediment headland bypassing. Sediment flux around four idealized headlands was investigated using the hydrodynamic model Delft-3D and spectral wave model SWAN. Simulations explored morphologies, substrate compositions, sediment grain sizes, and physical forcings. A generalized analytical framework based on flow disruption and sediment volume refined which factors and conditions were more useful to address sediment bypassing. A bypassing parameter was developed for alongshore sediment flux between upstream and downstream cross-shore transects to determine the degree of blockage by a headland. All headlands may allow sediment flux, although the controlling factors on sediment bypassing were determined to be wave angle, size and shape of the headland, and sediment grain size.
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