Experimental Study of the Performance of Floating Breakwaters with Heave Motion

Nowadays, the application of floating breakwaters in small or recreational harbors has found more popularity. These types of breakwaters are more flexible in terms of design, configuration and especially installation compared with fixed breakwaters. In the current study, the performance of floating breakwater (FBs) under regular waves was studied using the physical modeling method. For the modeling practice, a wave flume with a flap-type wave generator and progressive wave absorber was designed, constructed and used in order to investigate the performance of FBs. In this regard, a number of geometrical and hydrodynamic parameters were chosen including the degree of freedom, width variation, FB shapes (pontoon, T and types) and draft depth. In each scenario the water level variation was measured in three points along the flume. Based on the measured water levels transmission, reflection and energy dissipation coefficients were obtained. The effect of each parameter on the performance of FBs was investigated and the best configuration was proposed for further studies. According to the collected experimental data, the mathematical descriptions for calculating the transmission coefficient were also proposed.