Interaction of Irregular Waves with Vertical Breakwater and Characteristics of Secondary Wave Generated by Overtopping

This study investigated the interaction between irregular waves and vertical breakwater. The main goal was to determine the wave force on the breakwater for different depths, along with the evolution of the secondary wave generated by overtopping. The open source code DualSPHysics was used in the simulation. Wavelet transform was employed to remove the acoustic components from the weakly compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics pressure solution. The results of the experiments and simulations showed that although the wave height at the low water level(case 2) was smaller than that at the high water level(case 1), the horizontal and uplifting force of case 2 was higher than that of case 1. In case 2, a large impact pressure occurred because of the plunging wave and wave breaking effects. As the water level was close to the breakwater top in case 1, the secondary wave generated by overtopping was studied. Results indicated that wave and breakwater interactions transfer wave energy from the leading wave component to higher harmonics. Two main harmonics were identified in the secondary wave. The first harmonic was the incident peak frequency, which was still the dominant component. During the wave propagation behind the breakwater, the frequencies of harmonics remained unchanged, but the amplitude of the first harmonic showed an obvious change. Under the same wave condition, the first and second harmonics did not change with depth.