Numerical and experimental research of wave interaction with a porous breakwater

The design formula for rubble mound breakwaters by Van der Meer has an unclear Notional Permeability term. This term causes a lot of confusion for designers. In the past many people have tried to derive a better formulation for that term by experimental and analytical research. The goal of this study was to obtain a better formulation along a numerical way. This study explores the numerical possibilities and tries to define which direction has to be taken in future research. As a first step, a very simplified case is taken with a vertical homogeneous breakwater which interact with monochromatic waves. In total six different blocks were made of epoxy and elastocoast. Only 4 out of the 6 blocks were tested. Also the porosity (n), laminar friction (α) and turbulent friction constant (β) of the blocks were determined experimentally. This way the experimental results could be compared with computations. These experiments have been done in the large flume of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory of the TU Delft. Two types of data were collected: pore pressures and water levels in front and behind the block. The water levels seemed to be the most reliable data. The main deficit of the setup was the wave absorber at the end of the flume. The wave absorber is not able to sufficiently absorb long waves. So the dataset had to be corrected for that effect. The created dataset was in line with results from earlier experiments.