Estimation of Harbor Responses due to Construction of a New Port in Ulsan Bay

Abstract

Introduction of wave model, considered the effect of shoaling, refraction, diffraction, partial reflection, bottom friction, breaking at the coastal waters of complex bathymetry, is a very important factor for most coastal engineering design and disaster prevention problems. As waves move from deeper waters to shallow coastal waters, the fundamental wave parameters will change and the wave energy is redistributed along wave crests due to the depth variation, the presence of islands, coastal protection structures, irregularities of the enclosing shore boundaries, and other geological features. Moreover, waves undergo severe change inside the surf zone where wave breaking occurs and in the regions where reflected waves from coastline and structural boundaries interact with the incident waves. Therefore, the application of mild-slope equation model in this field would help for understanding of wave transformation mechanism where many other models could not deal with up to now. The purpose of this study is to form a extended mild-slope equation wave model and make comparison and analysis on variation of harbor responses in the vicinities of Ulsan Harbor and Ulsan New Port, etc. due to construction of New Port in Ulsan Bay. We also considered the increase of water depth at the entrance channel by dredging work up to 15 meters depth in order to see the dredging effect. Among several model analyses, the nonlinear and breaking wave conditions are showed the most applicable results. This type of trial might be a milestone for port development in macro scale, where the induced impact analysis in the existing port due to the development could be easily neglected.