A case study of the new breakwater of the Port of Genova: Comparing the PIANC design method with the new EUROCODE

Breakwaters used to protect harbours and coastal areas worldwide are one of the most common coastal structures. The complexity of the physical processes associated with the design has led to the development of many empirical formulas while a standardized method for the selection of breakwaters’ design parameters in the EU does not yet exist. The...

Drift Force Numerical Simulation of a Vertical Wall and a Sphere in Regular Waves

Mooring system is one of the critical parts of a floating system in an offshore environment. It can be compromised by the wave drift force that exerts a considerable amount of load due to its non-linear properties. Due to the increase in complexity of the analysis, a numerical method is often opted to conduct the simulation of the wave drift...

Wave loads on vertical walls: Validation of design methods for non-breaking waves of bimodal spectra

During the design process of the new sea lock in IJmuiden the design wave conditions were described by a bimodal wave spectrum. With a spectral calculation method it was observed that a small low frequency component leaded to a large influence in the force spectrum. This observation served as the starting point for this thesis, where different...

Spectral simulation of non-breaking wave forces up to the second order on immobile vertical walls

Induced by a rapid increase of ship sizes in the last decades, the demand for deeper waterways emerged and so did the demand for higher breakwaters. The scale of land reclamation projects has also increased concomitantly. This means they extend such projects now further offshore into deeper water, requiring higher watersheds. In this deeper...

Wave transmission at vertical breakwaters

Recently, interest in vertical breakwaters has grown. The development of ports from natural small harbours to artificial large harbours facing the outer sea has demanded the construction of breakwaters in rougher seas. The vertical breakwater could play a role of importance in this development. To obtain general guidelines for the design of...

Economic optimal design of vertical breakwaters

In Europe the interest in and the importance of vertical breakwaters is growing. A central point is the optimal geometry, e.g. the width and height of the breakwater caisson chosen such that the total costs over the lifetime of the structure are minimized. Probabilistic design tools provide several methods to determine the probability of failure...

The application of spectral analysis in the determination of wave loads on vertical breakwaters

Vertical breakwaters are used in the design of harbours to create a protective area. This protective area can be an approach channel or the harbour itself. Because of large new projects, such as Maasvlakte 11 in the Netherlands and the increasing sizes of ships, many harbours have to be placed in deep water. Deep water requires higher...

Wave impacts on vertical breakwaters

The need for coastal structures, such as breakwaters, at great water depths is rapidly increasing as a result ofthe increasing draught of large vessels and off-shore land reclamations which can, for instance, be used for the benefit of the expansion of harbours and related industrial activities. In water depths greater than approximately 10 m...