A STUDY ON BREAKING OF MULTI-DIRECTIONAL RANDOM WAVES DUE TO A SUBMERGED BREAKWATER

The objective of this study is to investigate experimentally the breaking limit of waves due to a submerged breakwater in a multi-directional random wave field. Experiments have been conducted in a 3-D wave basin equiped with a multi-directional random wave generator. In this study, a special type of wave gages has been employed to record the water surface fluctuations at wave breaking with favorable accuracy. This study investigates the influence of incident wave conditions and wave directionality parameter Smax on the wave breaking limit. An equation has been introduced to predict the wave breaking limit in regular wave field using the least square technique applied to the results. This equation has been revealed to work well over a wide domain of wave conditions ranging from crossing waves to multi-directional random waves.