Stephan T. Grilli and M.A. Losada and F. Martin
Associate Professor Professor Graduate
student
Department of Ocean Eng. Department
of Ocean Eng. UoS
niversity of Rhode Island University
of Cantabria
Narragansett, RI 02882, USA Santander,
39005, Spain
Abstract :
Laboratory experiments are presented for the breaking of solitary
waves over breakwaters. A variety of behaviors is observed, depending on
both breakwater and incident wave height : for emerged breakwaters, waves
may collapse over the crown, or break backward during rundown; and for
submerged breakwaters, waves may break forward or backward, downstream
of the breakwater. The limit of overtopping and wave transmission and reflection
coefficients are experimentally determined. It is seen, transmission is
large over submerged breakwaters (55-90%), and may also reach 20 to 40%
over emerged breakwaters. Computations using a fully nonlinear potential
model, agree well with experimental results for the submerged breakwaters,
particularly for the smaller waves (H/d<0.4). For emerged breakwaters,
computations correctly predict the limit of overtopping, and the backward
collapsing during rundown.
Keywords :
Solitary waves, Wave height, Breakwaters, Shore protection, Ocean engineering, Laboratories, Computer software, Nonlinear fluid mechanics, Boundary Element Method.