Distribution of individual wave overtopping volumes in shallow water wave conditions

This paper contributes to a better knowledge on the distribution of individual wave overtopping volumes in shallow-water wave conditions. Results from new two-dimensional physical model tests on typical rubble-mound breakwater geometries indicate that the formulae by Besley (1999) are underestimating the number of individual overtopping waves in non-Rayleigh-distributed, shallow-water wave conditions. Additionally, the proposed shape factors by Franco et al. (1994), Van der Meer and Janssen (1994), Victor et al. (2012) in the two-parameter Weibull-distribution, which is normally used for describing individual wave overtopping volumes, have been seen to over predict the largest overtopping volumes in depth-limited waves. Correction terms based on the incident wave height distributions are introduced in the present paper to modify the existing formulations by Besley (1999), Franco et al. (1994), Van der Meer and Janssen (1994), and Victor et al. (2012). The modifications significantly improve the predictions of the largest overtopping volumes in shallow-water wave conditions.