EXTREME WAVE IMPACT ON VERTICAL SEAWALL STRUCTURES

摘要

This paper is concerned with extreme wave events and their interactions with vertical seawall structures. Both physical and numerical models were employed to gain insight into the propagation of extreme waves towards the shore and their impact on vertical seawalls. The extreme wave was generated by dropping a rectangular obstacle into a wave tank at one end. This wave then propagated to the other end of the tank until hitting a vertical seawall protected by a breakwater. Physical model tests were carried out to examine the wave impacts for different still water depths and distances between the breakwater and the seawall. It was found that the maximum runup height increased with an increased still water depth but decreased with an increased distance between the seawall and the breakwater. The peak pressure on the seawall can be reduced by at least 3 times with the presence of a breakwater. Navier-Stokes equations were solved by the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The numerical modelling results were compared with the experimental observations on the wave generation, run-up, and wave-structure interactions, and the agreement was satisfactory.