Experimental and Numerical Investigation On Wave Transmission Past Rubble-Mound Submerged Breakwaters

In this paper the wave transmission past submerged breakwaters is investigated with the use of a 2D Boussinesq-type model (BOUSS-2D) developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) included in the Aquaveo™ Surface-water Modelling System (SMS). Due to the nature of the model the submerged barrier has been treated as surface-piercing porous structure implemented in the model as a porous layer boundary. The numerical model has been calibrated and validated against 2D physical model tests (Ciardulli, 2009) performed at the LInC Laboratory of University of Naples “Federico II”. A simple method to derive the porous layer parameters has been proposed providing engineers with guidelines for the use of porous layer to predict transmission coefficient behind submerged structures when using Boussinesq-type 2D (horizontal) numerical model. Numerical predictions have been found to be in good agreement with measurements (R² statistics around 0.9) as well as with outcomes of the semi-empirical equations by Buccino and Calabrese and d'Angremond et al. (maximum difference 0.08).