A PRELIMINARY MODEL STUDY OF WAVE RUNUP ON CAISSON TYPE STRUCTURES
N. Haritos & R. Armstrong, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia
ABSTRACT
A pilot research program into the hydrodynamic effects of waves on large offshore caisson structures in shallow waters is currently being conducted within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of The University of Melbourne. Of particular interest to this study is the experimental measurement of wave run up in the diffraction regime, where a novel combination of fine wire capacitance wave probes and more traditional video visualization techniques are being used to facilitate the recording of t h e maximum wave run up on a laboratory model of the caisson. The aim of the study is to compare the recorded results with estimated values using a recently developed numerical method (Isaacson & Cheung 1994), that is able to account for second order wave diffraction. Results currently in hand from this pilot study suggest that the actual wave cylinder interaction effects (wave run up, horizontal shear and overturning moment) slightly exceed the numerical predictions made by the second order wave diffraction theory although these can still be used as a good initial estimate.
