Behaviour of rubble-mound breakwater in directional and uni-directional waves

Abstract

The application of directional waves in design processes has clearly received much interest during recent years. Thus, in model testing with moored ships and offshore structures, significant deviations have been revealed between results obtained in traditional uni-directional wave trains and those obtained in directional wave fields. Whether the same tendency is valid in connection with the design of rubble mound breakwaters is studied in the present project. A breakwater with a front slope of 1:2 is tested at the scale 1:40. The weight and diameter of the stones in the core, filter and armour layers were carefully selected, and the sources of scatter in repeated tests were minimized. Furthermore, the incident wave energy was accurately adjusted to keep the same level in both uni-directional and directional waves. For the actual rubble-mound breakwater unambiguous results were obtained. When uni-directional waves were applied, the damage increased by 30–50% relative to the directional wave situation.