Concrete cubes as armour unit—an experimental study for berm breakwater

Abstract

Berm breakwater consists of a wide berm at or around the water level and has an armour layer, whose shape changes in response to wave action yielding a stable profile. In the present study the influence of wave height, wave period and berm width on the stability of the breakwater as well as on the wave runup and wave rundown are studied. Experiments were conducted on berm breakwater model of 1:30 scale using concrete cubes as armour units. For the given experimental conditions the stability number was found to vary from 2.21 to 3.63. Further the model in 0.37m water depth was more stable than the one in 0.40 and 0.43m. The runup values were within the range of 0.52 to 1.08. While, the rundown values had the variation from 0.45 to 0.88. © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.