The interaction of surface water waves with submerged breakwaters

This paper concerns the behaviour of nonlinear regular waves interacting with rectangular submerged breakwaters. A new series of experimental results is presented and compared with numerical calculations based upon a Boundary Element Method (BEM) that utilises multiple fluxes to deal with the discontinuities encountered at the corners of the domain. Specifically, comparisons concern both the spatial water surface profiles at various times and the spatial evolution of the harmonics generated by the breakwaters, the latter being an important focus for the paper. The BEM is shown to accurately model both the water surface profile and the harmonic generation, provided the breakwater width is sufficient to ensure that flow separation is not a controlling influence. Furthermore, evidence is provided to confirm that reflection from rectangular submerged breakwaters is fundamentally a linear phenomenon. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.