Dave Simmonds

Teaching interests

• Coastal Engineering
• Hydraulic Engineering
• IT (including MATLAB)
• Integrated Design
  

 

 

    Diving students prepare to deploy an acoustic

    doppler current profiler  to measure wave heights

    and currents in Plymouth Sound

 

 

 

Research interests

Dr. Dave Simmonds is a Senior Lecturer in coastal engineering at the University of Plymouth with over 13 years experience of research in coastal engineering and science. He has expertise in field experiments and statistical analysis techniques. Following research fellowships on EPSRC and EU MAST projects he was appointed Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer at the University of Plymouth.  He was CI on the recently completed EPSRC project EP/C005392/1 “A Reliability Framework for the Long term Prediction of Beach Evolution” (RF-PeBLE). He is also CI on the EU project Theseus: innovative technologies for safer European coasts in a changing climate [244104/FP7-ENV-2009-1].  He has published papers in international journals including: Coastal Engineering; Marine Geology and the Journal of Waterways Ports, Coastal and Ocean Engineering. These papers have focussed on coastal data analysis, beach morphodynamics and numerical modelling. He has been a member of the EPSRC College and acts as a referee for international coastal journals.

     Experimental tests in wave flume, Hannover, on a mixed beach.

 

UoP Research group membership

Centre for Coastal and Ocean Science and Engineering (CCOSE) 
Civil Engineering 
Coastal Engineering 

Research degrees awarded to supervised students

2005 Adrian Pedrozo-Acuna, PhD: Concerning Swash on Steep Beaches (Awarded)
2005 Ying Li, PhD: Investigation of multi-scale variability of beach profiles (Award pending)
1998 Francoise Ozanne, PhD:Performance of a Boussinesq Model for Shoaling and Breaking Waves.  

Grants & contracts

SWRDA

Wave modelling for the Wave Hub (WM4WH) Peninsula Research Institute in Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMARE, 387k) Prof D Reeve, Dr D Simmonds, Dr S Pan, Dr V Magar, Prof A Chadwick

EU

Innovative coastal technologies for safer European coasts in a changing climate (THESEUS)

[244104/FP7-ENV-2009-1]

EPSRC EP/C005392/1
A Risk-based Framework for Predicting Long-term Beach Evolution (£423,123)
Prof Dominic Reeve; Prof Andrew Chadwick; Dr Mark Spivack (Cambridge); Dr Ping Dong (Dundee); Dr David Simmonds; Dr Mark Davidson
October 2005 - September  2006.

    Field Site near Barton on Sea.

 

Publications

 

Journals

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Reeve, D.E. (2008) Wave-impact characteristics of plunging breakers acting on gravel beaches. Marine Geology. In press

Ying Li , Dave Simmonds, Dominic Reeve (2008) Quantifying uncertainty in extreme values of design parameters with resampling techniques. Ocean Engineering 35 (2008) 1029– 1038

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Chadwick, A.J. & Silva, R. (revision) A numerical-empirical approach for evaluating morphodynamic processes on gravel, and mixed sand-gravel, beaches. Marine Geology

Reeve, D.E., Li, Y.,  Lark, M. and Simmonds, D. 2007, An Investigation of the multi-scale temporal variability of beach profiles at Duck using wavelet packet, Coastal Engineering, appear online Jan. 25, 2007.

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Otta, A.K., & Chadwick, A.J.(2006) On the cross-shore profile change of gravel beaches. Coastal Engineering, No.53-(4), 335-347. 

Pedrozo-Acuña, A. , Simmonds, D J and Silva, R. (2005). Descripción de la cinemática del oleaje por medio de ecuaciones tipo Boussinesq. Revista de Ingenieria Hidraulica en Mexico,vol. XX, núm. 4, pp. 69-75, octubre-diciembre de 2005 IMTA (in Spanish).

Ávila. A., Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Silva, R., & Simmonds, D.J., (2005, in press) Evaluación de la inundación generada por tsunamis en la costa pacífica mexicana Revista de Ingeniería Hidráulica en México, IMTA (in Spanish).

Huntley, D.A. & Simmonds, D. & Tatavarti, R., 1999.  Use of collocated sensors to measure coastal wave reflection.  J.Waterways, Port, Coastal & Ocean Eng., 125, pp46–52.

Baldock, T.E. & Simmonds D.J., 1999.  Separation of incident and reflected waves over arbitrary bathymetry.  Technical note in J.Coastal Engineering. 38, pp167-176

Voulgaris, G., Simmonds, D., Michel, D., Collins, M.B. & Huntley, D.A., 1998.  Measuring & modelling sediment transport on a macrotidal ridge & runnel beach: an intercomparison.  J Coastal Research 14(1) pp315–330.

Conferences

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Reeve, D.E., Horrillo-Caraballo, J.M. (2008) Características de los impactos de oleaje en playas de grava: El rol de las presiones impulsivas. XXIII Latin-american Conference in Hydraulics. IAHR, Cartagena, Colombia (in spanish). to be presented

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Reeve, D.E. (2008) Wave-impact characteristics of plunging breakers acting on gravel beaches. Young Coastal Scientists' and Engineers' Conference, Oxford University.(Winner of the Best oral presentation prize)

Priestley, D.A., Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Reeve, D.E., Simmonds, D.J., Mason, T.E. (2006). Deriving gravel threshold velocities in the surf zone from passive acoustic analysis. Littoral 2006, Gdansk, Poland

David Simmonds, Mark Davidson, Dominic Reeve, Andrew Chadwick,Ping Dong, Mark Spivack, Abdulla Kizhisseri, Harshinie Karunarathna, Xingzheng Wu  (in press) “A Risk Based Framework for Predicting Long-term Beach Evolution” Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Coastal Engineering         

Pedrozo, A., Chadwick, A.,J., Avila. A., Simmonds, D., & Silva, R., (2003) Modelación a gran escala de playas compuestas por sedimentos gruesos. IV Congreso Intemacional Puertos y Costas, Realidades y Perspectivas, AMLP. Acapulco, Mexico (in Spanish).

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D.J., Otta, A.K., & Chadwick, A.J.(in press) A numerical study of coarse-grained beach dynamics. 5th International Conference on Coastal Dynamics 2005, Barcelona, Spain.

Pedrozo-Acuña, A., Simmonds, D. & Chadwick, A.J.(2004) Modelling swash zone morphological changes in gravel beaches. (Physics of Estuarines and Coastal Seas 2004) CD 1-4pp. Mérida, México.

Van Wellen, E, Baldock, T E, Chadwick, A J and Simmonds, D J. 2001. STRAND - a model for longshore sediment transport in the swash zone. In: Billy L Edge (ed) Coastal Engineering 2000, 3139-3150. American Society of Civil Engineers: Reston, Virginia.

Simmonds, D J, Lawrence, J and Chadwick, A J. 2001. Characterisation of wave sequencing in surface elevation time series. In: Hans Hanson and Magnus Larson (eds), Coastal Dynamics 01, 82-91. American Society of Civil Engineers: Reston, Virginia.

Kizhisseri, A S, Simmonds, D, Rafiq,Y and Borthwick,M, 2005, An evolutionary computation approach to sediment transport modelling, International conference on Coastal Dynamics 2005, April 4-8, Barcelona, Spain.

 

Links

• THESEUS
• Coastal Engineering Research Group
• COZONE