The interaction between the wave and muddy shore plays an important role in the dynamic processes of muddy coasts. The law of cohesive sediment transport under the wave action is very difficult to study because of the complexity of the mud rheology. This paper describes the current status of research into the wave dissipation and cohesive sediment transport, including insight into relations between the mud wash and wave deformation, the cohesive sediment behavior obtained from the laboratory experiment.

The flume experiment was carried out in the oceanic engineering laboratory of the Tianjin University using mud from the Haihe River Mouth. The experiments include the wave dissipation of mud bed with conditions of different mud concentrations, wave heights, wave periods and wave types (regular and irregular wave).

The study on the experiment data is continuing. The initiatory analysis indicate the behavior of the mud is complex and it is very difficult to identify a clearly defined "fluid mud layer", which perhaps improved that to build integrated model of the solidified mud bed, soft mud and fluid mud is a good way to describe the cohesive sediment movement. The comparison among the different muddy bed also shows that the features of mud bed influenced the wave dissipation greatly. The dissipation of wave height increases with the increasing of the mud concentration when the mud concentration is low, however, the dissipation of wave height reduces with the increasing of the mud concentration when the mud concentration is high.

The regular wave dissipation can be expressed as an exponential function, the wavelength increases with the wave dissipation increase. The Law of irregular is similar to that of regular wave.