Experimental Investigations and Development of New Relations to Determine Run-down Levels of Irregular Waves on Reshaping Breakwaters

In this research, the effects of irregular wave action on run-down on the slope of reshaping rubble–mound breakwaters have been investigated. Reshaping breakwater is a new kind of breakwater in which the initial profile is changed to an S-shaped profile, once affected by waves. Therefore, the relations related to run-down levels on conventional breakwaters cannot be used for this type of structure. This research is conducted based on Experimental Modeling. Experiments were performed in the Soil Conservation and Watershed Management Research Institute (SCWMRI) for multiple cross sections of reshaping breakwaters with three different slopes in years 2003 and 2004. The wave flume was equipped with a modern DHI wave generation system, which contains paddle, power pack, hardware and software divisions. The hydraulic responses mentioned above, were investigated by changing the wave parameters such as significant wave height, mean and peak wave period and storm duration on the three structure’s seaward slopes, equal to 1:1.25, 1:2.0, 1:2.5. JONSWAP wave spectrum was used in all experiments. The Armored layer materials were included in three grading classes (Dn85A/Dn15A=1.14, 1.44, 1.82) and a Range of structural index permeability, Pe. In order to investigate the effects of changing structural geometry, wave properties, and the comparison between two scales, 120 tests were performed with 1000 to 6000 waves. Finally the results of different scale factors were compared. The experimental results were plotted as graphs showing the run-down levels versus the surf similarity parameter and deepwater wave steepness. Because the Iribarren number does not accurately describe the combined effects of slope and wave steepness, an improved and new formula was fitted to data using multiple linear regression and nonlinear regression, which results in some new empirical equations presented in this paper.