Experimental study of a new type of floating breakwater

• A new configuration of floating breakwater is designed to reduce long and high wave.
• This new breakwater consists of two parts; rigid cylinders and flexible mesh cage.
• Experiments are carried out to investigate the effectiveness of this breakwater.
• This article researched mooring forces, motion responses and wave height.

A new type of floating breakwater (FB) is proposed in this paper. Its hydrodynamic performance has been tested. The structure of the new breakwater named cylindrical floating breakwater (CFB) consists of two parts: a main body of rigid cylinders, and a flexible mesh cage containing a number of suspending balls that are intended to absorb the wave energy into their mechanical energy. A series of experiments were carried out on the new floating breakwater and traditional double pontoons and box floating breakwaters to compare their performances. A two-dimensional wave flume was used in the experiment; the incident and transmitted waves, the tensions on the mooring lines and the motion responses of the floating breakwaters were measured. Results showed that the new floating breakwater had a better performance than the traditional double pontoons and the box floating breakwaters: wave transmission was significantly reduced by the mesh cage with the balls, especially for long waves.

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