Breaking Wave Impact Pressure on a Vertical Wall

Abstract

Offshore and coastal structures experience wave impact loads particularly due to breaking waves throughout its design period. In the present paper, an experimental program has been devised to improve our perceptive of the physics and the characteristics of impact pressures due to breaking waves on a vertical wall. The salient features of the study such as model details, breaking wave simulation, the impact and dynamic pressure variation along the depth of the wall are presented. The maximum impact pressure magnitude is found to be of the order of ten times that of the non-breaking dynamic pressure and it always occurred above the still water level for different intensities of breaking waves considered. The minimum pressure rise time is observed to be 0.235 ms.