DYNAMIC FORCES DUE TO WAVES BREAKING AT VERTICAL COASTAL STRUCTURES

Resumen

In the past 20 years, considerable effort has been devoted to replacing the widely used approaches of HIROI, MINIKIN, NAGAI, PLAKIDA and others /1,2,3,4/, for the design of vertical breakwaters under the impact of breaking waves, with improved and more exact calculation methods. However, almost all new theoretical and empirical approaches lacked the support of prototype measurements or test results from model measurements at a larger scale. The difference between the proposed design criteria and classical approaches is sometimes so great that engineers do not have a reliable method for the design of a vertical or composite breakwater. Figure 1 shows the resulting wave forces per unit width due to different theories as a function of the design wave height H.