After the failure of several large breakwaters in late 1970’s and early 1980’s where the role of rocking and breakage of armour became apparent, the importance of understanding this rocking phenomenon is given a great emphasis. Single layer randomly placed armour units are widely used in breakwater designs as they are more economical due to the less volume requirement. But these single layer units have a much more “brittle” behaviour and strength of the units becomes a critical factor. As the stresses developed after the impact is difficult to measure directly in the scale models, currently percentage rocking is used as a design criterion. But a clear relationship between this quantity and breakage has not been identified. Even though the single layer armour unit types are widely used the knowledge on the rocking behaviour of this type of units are limited. Therefore, to get a better insight into the rocking behaviour of single layer armour units a previously proposed technique of instrumented unit with embedded sensor was adopted. This technique was found to be promising in detecting the rocking motion in standalone mode. However, one issue of that technique was relatively lower sampling frequency. Because of that, enough data could not be captured to resolve the rocking motion in time very accurately. Therefore, in this report the measurements with standalone IMU sensor embedded in 3D printed model armour unit has been developed further. Firstly , different techniques were adopted to get the optimum sampling frequency and sampling frequency was increased from 25 Hz to 100 Hz. This report includes further details on the processing method and obtained results after performing the 2D physical model testings. It is the first time that stand alone rocking motions are reported for single layer armour units. By increasing the sampling frequency from25 Hz to 100 Hz, rocking events can now be resolved in time by 5-10 measurements points. Gyroscope data and accelerometer data were combined to separate the linear acceleration from raw accelerometer data. Upward and downward rotational motions were distinguished, and impact velocities were calculated based on both accelerometer and gyroscope. By analyzing the data it was observed that the angle of rotation during the rocking event is small and usually unit returns to its original position after a full rotation.

Coastal areas around the world have attracted settlements and human activities since the early stages of the history until nowadays. This has introduced continuous modifications to the natural characteristics of these coastal regions by means of coastal structures and engineering interventions. The design of such coastal structures has evolved significantly since the first quarter of the XXth Century, when more scientific design methods and formulae were developed. Nevertheless, further research is required given the stochastic nature of the environmental loads involved, the remaining uncertainties regarding the response of these structures to the applied loads and the growing impacts of climate change and sea level rise. Four knowledge gaps are identified regarding the “Damage assessment of coastal structures in climate change adaptation”. Based on these, the objectives of this thesis are summarized as follows. First, climate change adaptation: demand for validated upgrading alternatives. Second, damage characterization concepts: demand for unified damage characterization concepts. Third, damage characterization parameters: demand for universal and more accurate damage characterization parameters. Fourth, damage characterization measuring techniques: demand for validating the suitability of innovative survey methods. These knowledge gaps are addressed using physical modelling results from two test campaigns (UPorto deep water and Deltares shallow water tests. In consequence, this study includes the validation of the damage criteria required for a precise assessment of a coastal structure (second knowledge gap), the validation of an universal damage parameter for rubble mound structures (third knowledge gap), the validation of the benefits of innovative measuring techniques when carrying out physical modelling tests (fourth knowledge gap) and the validation of upgrading alternatives for climate change scenarios (first knowledge gap). Thus, it can be stated that with these definitions, parameters and measuring techniques, a complete method for damage characterization of coastal structures is presented. It was also defined how this damage characterization method can be used to precisely and accurately describe the damage to conventional and non-conventional coastal structures. Furthermore, this method was also used to describe the effects of not only current environmental forces acting on the structures but also future and more energetic scenarios. For such future scenarios, adaptation alternatives for coastal structures were evaluated and berm configurations are recommended for their upgrading. Future research is needed in order to evaluate, adjust and generalize the conclusions made in this thesis, considering additional structure configurations and environmental loading conditions.