An Investigation on Stability of Reshaping Breakwaters Using Experimental Data

This paper presents results of an experimental investigation on stability of reshaping breakwaters. Results of 82 test cases have been used to study the reshaped profile condition of such breakwaters during the process of wave attacks. In this research, first 7 independent parameters having significant effects on structure stability have been identified and their consequence on geometric parameters of stability (6 parameters) have been studied. These 6 dependant parameters are selected so that they show completely the deformed geometry of the structure with the least probable tries. Then, using experimental data and fitting them to various statistical models, some formulae are suggested for estimation of geometrical parameters of reshaped profiles. Also efforts to increase the validity of these experimental formulae are presented. Finally a software called IB has been developed using results of the present research. Then comparisons have been made between IB and BREAKWAT program. Results show that BREAKWAT fails to predict the reshaped profile in some test cases.