Experimental study on wave attenuation performance of a new type of free surface breakwater

In this paper, a new type of free surface breakwater is proposed for the purpose of wave attenuating in regular waves. The structure is made up of two parts: the rigid main body of a rectangle box piercing through the free surface, and the appendage structure with double flexible membranes hanging below the rectangle box. A series of preliminary experiments were carried out in a two dimensional (2D) wave flume, the wave attenuation performance of the proposed breakwater under different factors, including relative width B/lambda (box width B, wave length lambda), the relative draft d/lambda (box draft d), wave steepness H/lambda (wave height H), as well as the length of flexible membrane were investigated and in comparison with other derived breakwater structures, such as a rectangle box, a rectangle box connected with a single flexible membrane. The results indicated that the newly proposed breakwater could achieve almost 50% in wave-attenuating performance in relatively long waves.

Automated summary

A new type of free surface breakwater structure was proposed in this study, with experiments showing that it could achieve nearly 50% wave attenuation performance in relatively long waves when compared to other breakwater structures.