AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF FLOOD WAVE IMPACT PRESSURES TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NEW SEAWALL DESIGNS USING A DAM-BREAK APPROACH
type: CreativeWork
description: Coastal flooding and erosion, a major consequence of coastal natural events can result in physical devastation, threats to human health and safety, detrimental effects on ecosystems, and severe economic losses to individuals and to society. These potentially devastating consequences are therefore justifying efforts to reduce both their occurrence and severity. Seawalls of varying slopes with wave energy dissipaters to create various degrees of roughness on their surfaces have been proposed as a potential evolution in the design of coastal defences. This present study therefore aimed at investigating the energy dissipating ability, in terms of impact pressures, of newly designed seawalls which incorporate unique energy dissipaters, with the ultimate goal of predicting the effectiveness of these new designs. To achieve these aims, a novel technique for generating floodwater waves has been developed and applied to new seawall models. A Low Cost Wave Tank (LCWT) with water release gate mechanism (dam-break method) was primarily designed and constructed for this purpose. Apart from the smooth surface wall model, geo-grid materials of varying textures and grit sizes have been used to model different degrees of surface roughness with each model subjected to varying wave heights and wall angles. The experimental tool and technique had been found to be effective and relatively economical while the gate release system represented a good approximation of instantaneous dam-break problem. The innovative imaging system (IS) and the sensor signal capture (SSC) techniques used for estimating flow velocity were found to be in close agreement with the commonly used PIV method, thus, could be a useful laboratory scheme for analysing hydrodynamics model studies. The study has also found the location of maximum impact pressures for the vertically inclined smooth surface wall model, to be varied from that of sloping forms which is in agreement with the propositions of most previous resea…
abstract: Coastal flooding and erosion, a major consequence of coastal natural events can result in physical devastation, threats to human health and safety, detrimental effects on ecosystems, and severe economic losses to individuals and to society. These potentially devastating consequences are therefore justifying efforts to reduce both their occurrence and severity. Seawalls of varying slopes with wave energy dissipaters to create various degrees of roughness on their surfaces have been proposed as a potential evolution in the design of coastal defences. This present study therefore aimed at investigating the energy dissipating ability, in terms of impact pressures, of newly designed seawalls which incorporate unique energy dissipaters, with the ultimate goal of predicting the effectiveness of these new designs. To achieve these aims, a novel technique for generating floodwater waves has been developed and applied to new seawall models. A Low Cost Wave Tank (LCWT) with water release gate mechanism (dam-break method) was primarily designed and constructed for this purpose. Apart from the smooth surface wall model, geo-grid materials of varying textures and grit sizes have been used to model different degrees of surface roughness with each model subjected to varying wave heights and wall angles. The experimental tool and technique had been found to be effective and relatively economical while the gate release system represented a good approximation of instantaneous dam-break problem. The innovative imaging system (IS) and the sensor signal capture (SSC) techniques used for estimating flow velocity were found to be in close agreement with the commonly used PIV method, thus, could be a useful laboratory scheme for analysing hydrodynamics model studies. The study has also found the location of maximum impact pressures for the vertically inclined smooth surface wall model, to be varied from that of sloping forms which is in agreement with the propositions of most previous resea…
author: Adegoke, PB
keywords: TC Hydraulic engineering. Ocean engineering
date published: 2014
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:30:03Z
provider: Liverpool Jon Moores University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Liverpool John Moores University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24377/LJMU.t.00004578