Narrow Results

With the rapid growth of offshore wind industry, the predition of the wave loads on different pile-supported structures is of great importance. To investigate the wave loads, a series of physical experiments and numerical simulations were conducted. As a new characteristic geometric scale, an equivalent diameter is proposed to analyze the dimensionless total wave loads. With the equivalent diameter, unified empirical formulas of wave loads versus Keulegan-Carpenter (KC) number is obtained for different complex pile-supported structures.

Computations of the Boussinesq-type wave model TRITON of wave propagation over a shallow foreshore with a varying low-tide terrace configuration were carried out. The results were compared with Scheldt flume physical experiments, using the same settings and post processing. The comparisons show that TRITON can model the wave propagation along shallow foreshores quite accurately as long as highly nonlinear effects do not play a significant role. Furthermore, the level of the low-tide terrace was found to influence the wave conditions at the toe of a fictive structure as follows: a) As the level of the low-tide terrace increases there is more energy dissipation and the significant wave height at the toe decreases, decreasing the hydraulic load. b) On the other hand, as the waves dissipate low-frequency energy is released and the spectral wave period at the toe increases, increasing the hydraulic load.