Wave height parameter for damage description of rubble-mound breakwaters

Abstract

In this paper it will be shown that the wave height parameter H 50, defined as the average wave height of the 50 highest waves reaching a rubble-mound breakwater in its useful life, can describe the effect of the wave height on the history of the armor damage caused by the wave climate during the structure's usable life. Using Thompson and Shuttler (Thompson, D.M., Shuttler, R.M., 1975. Riprap design for wind wave attack: A laboratory study on random waves. HRS Wallingford, Report 61, UK) data it will be shown that H 50 is the wave parameter that best represents the damage evolution with the number of waves in a sea state. Using this H 50 parameter, formulae as van der Meer (van der Meer, J.W., 1988. Rock slopes and gravel beaches under wave attack. PhD Thesis. Technical University of Delft) and Losada and Giménez-Curto (Losada, M.A., Gimenez–Curto, L.A., 1979. The joint effect of the wave height and period on the stability of rubble mound breakwaters using Iribarren's number. Coastal Engineering, 3, 77–96) are transformed into sea-state damage evolution formulae. Using these H 50-transformed formulae for regular and irregular sea states it will be shown how damage predictions are independent of the sea state wave height distribution. To check the capability of these H 50-formulae to predict damage evolution of succession of sea states with different wave height distributions, some stability tests with regular and irregular waves have been carried out. After analysing the experimental results, it will be shown how H 50-formulae can predict the observed damage independently of the sea state wave height distribution or the succession of sea states.