Numerical study of wave overtopping of a seawall supported by porous structures

This paper presents a VOF-based two-phase flow model for the simulation of wave interactions with seawall supported by a porous terrace. Firstly, the model was verified against laboratory data in a simple case for wave overtopping of a vertical wall. Comparison of computed and measured wave properties showed reasonably good agreement. The model was then applied to study the interactions of waves and a seawall protected by porous structures with a permeable terrace. The application results showed that the overtopping rate was strongly related to the energy dissipation through the drag force; the porous reef and terrace were very effective to produce a low crest type seawall. It is concluded that there exist two optimum values of porosity of the submerged reef, about of 0.25 and 0.7, that give minimum overtopping rates. Whereas, there is an effective range of porosity of the permeable terrace varying from 0.4 to 0.65 for significantly reducing the overtopping rate. The verification results confirm that the VOF-based two-phase flow model is sufficient robust to simulate the wave overtopping of coastal structures with reasonable accuracy.