Wave reflection characteristics of plane, dentated and serrated seawalls

The hydrodynamic performance of vertical and sloped plane, dentated and serrated seawalls were investigated using physical model studies. Regular and random waves of wide range of heights and periods were used. Tests were carried out for different inclinations of the seawall (i.e. θ=30, 40, 50, 60 and 90°) and for a constant water depth of 0.7 m. The wave reflection was measured to assess the dissipation character of the seawalls. It was observed that the serrated seawall was superior to the plane and dentated seawall in reducing the wave reflection. Even for the vertical case, the coefficient of reflection due to regular waves for dentated seawall ranged from 0.6–0.99 and for the vertical serrated seawall it was 0.45–0.98, whereas for the vertical plane wall, it was almost 1.0. It was found that the characteristic dimension of the seawall (i.e. L/W) and the relative water depth (i.e. d/L) were better influencing parameters compared to the conventionally used surf similarity parameter ‘ξ’ (ξ=tan θ/(H_i/L)^0.5) in predicting the reflection from the dentated and serrated seawall, where L is the local wave length, W the width of the dent along the length of the seawall slope, d the water depth at the toe and H_i is the incident wave height. A similar trend was observed for the random waves too. The reduction in the wave reflection due to random waves for the dentated seawall as compared to the plane seawall was about 18% and for the serrated seawall, it was 20%. It was observed that the reflection due to random waves was lesser for all the three different walls than the regular waves, due to the mutual interaction of random waves. Multiple regression analysis on the measured data points was carried out and predictive equations for the reflection coefficient were obtained for both regular and random waves. This study will be useful in the design of energy dissipating type vertical quay walls in ports and harbours, sloped seawalls for shore protection from erosion and sloped caisson as breakwaters. Comparison of predictive formulae with the experimental results revealed that the prediction methods were good enough for practical purposes.