Simulation of wave downfall pressures on coastal protection structures: energy considerations

A substantial proportion of the UK coastline is heavily developed with major population centres such as Liverpool and Edinburgh owing their existence to their coastal location. In recent storms such as that of February 2014, instances of particularly violent wave impacts were observed. The resulting overtopping and associated pressures in these instances resulted in severe flooding and structural damage along the south and south-west coasts of the UK. In general, the buildings most severely affected by these events tend to be residential. In order to understand the response of such structures to these types of events, engineers need to be able to quantify the pressures resulting from the plumes generated by violent wave breaking, hereby termed as white water overtopping. For the design of coastal structures for wave overtopping EurOtop is the design manual currently in use in the UK, along with BS6349. However, both codes do not fully address the issue of white-water overtopping. A Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model was used to simulate an experiment carried out in the Large Wave Flume (GWK) in Hannover. No correlation was found, using the standard approach, which could be used to predict the downfall pressures stochastically using incident wave properties. This paper will present an innovative approach to analysing the data using the Energy Balance Equation proposed by Li and Raichlen (2003)