Broken Wave Loads on a Vertical Wall: Large Scale Experimental Investigations

Abstract

Many storm protecting structures (eg. seawalls) are increasingly built at the back of the beach such that breaking waves are unlikely to reach them during the normal sea state. These structures are predominantly subjected to broken waves under most severe storm and tide conditions. Detailed studies relating broken wave forces to the incident wave parameters and beach slope are lacking. Therefore simplified assumptions are used to estimate the design loads due to broken waves. This knowledge gap has motivated to investigate the broken wave impact loads on coastal structures. A series of physical model experiments were carried out in the Large Wave Flume (GWK, Hannover, Germany) in order to measure the broken wave impact loads on a vertical wall. This paper describes the experimental results in detail. Based on the measured forces, a simple empirical formula is derived in terms of the wave parameters.