WAVE IMPACT LOADS AT LARGE AND FULL SCALE

Geoff Bullock1 & Charlotte Obhrai2

Introduction

Breaking Wave IMpacts on steep fronted COastal STructures (the BWIMCOST project) are
being investigated by means of a combination of field, laboratory and analytical/numerical
studies by a team from the University of Plymouth (UoP), the Queen’s University of Belfast
(QUB) and the University of Bristol (UoB). The overall aim is to gain a better understanding
of wave loading and its effects on coastal structures leading to the development of better
prediction methods and scaling laws. The investigation is ongoing and this presentation
illustrates just some of the results obtained from the field and large scale model tests carried
out to date.

Field Tests

The field measurements are being collected at the site on Admiralty Breakwater, Alderney,
used previously by UoP during the PROVERBS project (Bullock et al., 2000). Waves
approach this site from the Atlantic, often with their crests almost parallel to the breakwater.
The breakwater itself is a masonry structure which steps back irregularly at about 27O to the
vertical from the top of a low rubble mound.

The wave conditions just offshore from the toe of the mound are being recorded by means of
an array of 6 pressure transducers mounted on the sea bed. This enables both incident and
reflected wave heights to be determined. Instrumentation on the breakwater includes a two-
dimensional array of 8 pressure aeration units (PAUs) and a specially designed crack unit
(CU) on the seaward face of the structure, plus an upward facing pressure transducer and an
accelerometer on the parapet wall. The PAUs were developed by UoP to measure both
positive and negative wave induced pressures, and to enable the level of aeration in the
breaking waves to be estimated (Bird et al., 1998). The CU contains two 1m long
instrumented cracks, one 10mm wide and the other 1mm wide, and was designed by QUB to
enable the propagation of shock pressures within a structure to be investigated.

Both the waves and their effects on the structure are being recorded at 3 hourly intervals. The
samples are of 4 minutes duration when there is little wave activity but are almost continuous
when wave impacts are most likely to occur. In order to resolve impacts accurately, a data
collection rate of 4kHz is used for the PAUs and CU.

Laboratory Tests

Laboratory tests have been carried out at 1:25 scale in the wave channel at the University of
Plymouth and at 1:4 scale in the 324m long, 5m wide, 7m deep Grosser Wellenkanal (GWK)
at the Forschungszentrum Küste (FZK) in Hannover, Germany.

Both regular and irregular wave tests were carried out in the GWK using models which
reproduced the mound of Admiralty Breakwater with either a vertical or a 27O sloping wall on
1
Professor of Civil and Coastal Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Plymouth, UK.
2
Research Fellow, School of Engineering, University of Plymouth, UK.

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top. This enables unusually close comparisons to be made with the field tests whilst extending
their relevance beyond the range of the field conditions. Four PAUs and a CU of similar
design to those used on the field were installed on the walls together with 9 pressure
transducers provided by the FZK. The instrumentation offshore from the walls included 5
surface-piercing wave gauges and 5 bed-mounted pressure transducers at locations
corresponding to those of the pressure transducers used to measure waves in the field. A
further 5 wave gauges, 3 current meters and 2 bed-pressure transducers were installed at
locations above the mound and, for the final tests, 2 accelerometers were attached to the wall.
All transducers were logged at 220Hz whilst those from the PAU, CU and FZK wall pressure
transducers were also logged at 10kHz. Most tests were recorded on video.

Further details of the both the field and laboratory tests plus information on the numerical
studies may be found in Bullock et al (In press).

Outline of Results

To date, field impact-pressures up to ~400kPa have been recorded for incident significant
wave heights (HSi) of up to 3.1m. In most cases the peak pressures have been both temporally
and spatially localised with a vertical extent of ~20cm. However, this should not be taken to
imply that high pressures cannot extend simultaneously over much greater distances. It is also
important to note that sub-atmospheric pressures down to below -40kPa have been recorded.

As found in many small scale laboratory tests, the highest impact pressures have tended to be
associated with short rise times and vice versa. All of the latest results have fallen below the
curve suggested by Blackmore and Hewson (1984) for wave impacts on a seawall. Possibly
this is because, in both situations, the waves tend to have high levels of aeration. Bullock et
al. (2001) present estimates of voids ratios obtained in the field. Interestingly, none of the
field impacts captured to date would have been predicted by use of the parameter map
provided by Allsop and Kortenhaus (2001).

The GWK tests have demonstrated just how sensitive wave-impact loading is to the breaking
conditions and just how violent the process can be. Indeed, with maximum impact-pressures
of up to 3.5MPa, the values recorded in the GWK are believed to be the highest ever
measured in either laboratory or field. If the Froude law were applied to the measurements in
the conventional way, it would be predicted that, in the field, waves ~ 6m high would
generate pressure heads of up to ~1400m of seawater! The overall force on the structure
tended to be greatest when the impacts over a significant area were well correlated. Much of
the GWK data have yet to be analysed but different types of impact event have already been
identified that appear to be linked to the degree of air entrainment/entrapment (Obhrai et al.,
in prep., Peregrine et al., in prep.).

Due to the different chemical and biological properties of the water, seawater waves are likely
to contain more air than freshwater waves. If so, this will cause the fluid in seawater breakers
to be more compressible than that in freshwater breakers and it is widely believed that
application of the Froude law causes field pressures to be overestimated. It has been
suggested that Cauchy law scaling could be used to ‘correct’ for the presumed overestimation.
However, because the product of the Cauchy pressure and time scales is less than unity,
Cauchy scaling reduces the magnitude of the impulse. Not only would there seem to be no

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physical justification for this but it is also in disagreement with the results of tests carried out
at 1:25 scale using both freshwater and seawater (Bullock et al., 2001).

Numerical studies of the impact problem are being carried out at UoB using both simple
pressure-impulse models and directly with equations of motion for the compressible air-water
mixtures (Bullock et al., in press; Bredmose et al., in prep.). Just how high the pressure might
be in the field, where the low velocity of sound in the air-water mixture may be a major
factor, is still a matter of debate. Until recently, it was generally thought that the acoustic
limit, or water hammer pressure, would be unrealistically high, but it now seems that this may
not be the case when aeration is taken into account. Indeed, even higher pressures may be
possible due to the refraction and focusing of pressure waves cause by large spatial variations
in the velocity of sound associated with different levels of voids ratio.

Results obtained from BWIMCOST for the propagation of wave-impact pressures into the
cracks within masonry structures are presented at this seminar by Müller and Wolters (2004).

Tentative Conclusions

ƒ The boundaries of the impact zone in the parameter map are not entirely reliable.

ƒ Most field & freshwater model impacts are temporally and spatially localised.

ƒ Significant sub-atmospheric pressures can occur on the face of the structure which
could coincide with high internal pressures.

ƒ Freshwater wave impacts can produce extremely high maximum pressures. Pressure
heads greater than 250 times the incident wave height have been measured.

ƒ Peak pressures may be constrained by the ‘water-hammer’ or ‘acoustic’ limit (ρcU),

particularly in the field.

ƒ The magnitude of the resultant impulsive force depends on both the magnitude and the
spatial correlation of the impulsive pressures.

Acknowledgements
The investigation as a whole is being supported by the UK’s Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council whilst tests in the GWK were supported by the EU’s Access to
Research Infrastructure action of the Human Potential Programme (contract HPRI-CT-1999-
00101). Thanks are also due to the States of Guernsey for permission to conduct tests on
Admiralty Breakwater and to the breakwater maintenance staff on Alderney for their
assistance with the installation of equipment. The tests in the GWK were carried out in
collaboration with Dipl –Ing. J. Grüne.

References

Allsop, N.W.H. and Kortenhaus, A., 2001. “Ch. 2: Hydraulic Aspects.” Probabilistic design tools for
vertical breakwaters, A.A.Balkema, Rotterdam, 61-156.

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Bird, P.A.D., Crawford, A.R., Hewson, P.J. & Bullock, G.N., 1998. An instrument for field
measurement of wave impact pressures and sea water areation. Coastal Engineering, 35:
103-122.
Blackmore, P.A. and Hewson, P.J., 1984. Experiments on full-scale wave height pressures.
Coastal Engineering, 8, 331-346.
Bredmose, H., Peregrine, D.H, Bullock, G., Obhrai, C., Müller, G. & Wolters, G., in prep.
Extreme wave impact pressures and the effect of aeration. To be presented at the 19th Int.
Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies, 2004.
Bullock, G.N., Hewson, P.J., Crawford, A.R. & Bird, P.A.D., 2000. Field and laboratory
measurement of wave loads on vertical breakwaters. Proc. Coastal Structures 99,
Balkema, Roterdam, 2: 613-622.
Bullock, G.N., Crawford, A.R., Hewson, P.J., Walkden, M.J.A. & Bird, P.A.D., 2001. The
influence of air and scale on wave impact pressures. Coastal Engineering, 42, 291-312.
Bullock, G., Obhrai, C., Müller, G., Wolters, G., Peregrine, H. & Bredmose, H., in press.
Field and laboratory measurement of wave impacts, Proc. Coastal Structures 2003, ASCE.
Müller, G. & Wolters, G., 2004. Wave loads on blockwork breakwater / seawalls. Presented
at Land – sea margins: wave overtopping and protection along the coastline. ICE Maritime
Board Seminar at Oceanology International, London, 18 March 2004.
Obhrai, C., Bullock, G., Müller, G., Wolters, G., Peregrine, D.H., Bredmose, H. & Grüne, J.
in prep. Violent wave impacts on vertical and inclined walls: large scale model tests. To be
presented at Int. Conf. Coastal Eng., 2004.
Peregrine, D.H., Bredmose, H., McCabe, A., Bullock, G., Obhrai, C., Müller, G. & Wolters,
G., in prep. Violent water wave impact on walls and the role of air. To be presented at Int.
Conf. Coastal Eng., 2004.