Non-Hydrostatic Modelling of Coastal Flooding in Port Environments

Abstract

Understanding key flooding processes such as wave overtopping and overflow (i.e., water flows over a structure when the crest level of the structure is lower than the water level in front) is crucial for coastal management and coastal safety assessment. In port and harbour environments, waves are not only perpendicular to the coastal structure but also very oblique, with wavefronts almost perpendicular to the main infrastructures in the harbour docks. Propagation and wave–structure interaction of such perpendicular and (very) oblique waves need to be appropriately modelled to estimate wave overtopping properly. Overflow can also be critical for estimating flooding behind any coastal defence. In this study, such oblique and parallel waves (i.e., main wave direction is parallel to the structures) are modelled in a non-hydrostatic wave model and validated with physical model tests in the literature. On top, overflow is also modelled and validated using an existing empirical formula. The model gives convincing behaviours on the wave overtopping and overflow.

Impact of focused wave groups on pier structures: a case study of severe breaking waves at Pont del Petroli during storm Gloria

“…Five simulations were conducted, three of them using the non-linear shallow water equation-based model SWASH in order to calibrate the SWASH model by comparing it with the simulations that were conducted in the pysical model at the CIEM (Zijlema et al, 2011;Suzuki et al, 2023). For the remaining two simulations, a nesting was performed between the phase-averaged SWAN model (Booij et al, 1999) and SWASH, to propagate the storm Gloria.…”