Pressure Distribution at the Front Face and the Bottom of a Vertical Breakwater in Multidirectional Seas

An optimal design of vertical breakwaters subject to breaking and non-breaking waves requires 3D-effects such as short-crestedness and wave obliquity to be taken into account. For design purposes the potential load reduction of these effects should be properly considered to enable a more economic design of these structures. 3D-model tests have been conducted by a European research team coordinated by University of Bologna (Italy) and composed of Aalborg (Denmark) and Braunschweig Universities (Germany) in the Coastal Research Facility (CRF) at HR Wallingford. In this paper, these tests and first results are described and compared to standard design methods available suggesting that there is an even higher decrease of forces and pressures with increasing obliquity of the waves than assumed by present design.