Shock Pressure on Coastal Structures

Shock pressures caused by impact between a solid and a liquid, such as the case of waves breaking against coastal structures, could better be described as an elastic wave wherein the elasticity of the solid and the compressibility of the liquid are taken into consideration. Tests were conducted to study the probability of occurrence of shock pressures as high as the theoretical pressure predicted by the elastic wave approach, for the case of waves breaking against coastal structures. The tests consisted of dropping a plate whose edge was hinged at the water surface, into a water basin, and measuring the resulting pressure on the plate by piezoelectric type cells. The probability distributions of the ratio between the magnitude of the recorded and the theoretical pressure, and of the duration of pressure were found to fit Poissons distribution well at the 5% level of significance. These distributions could serve as a guide for predicting the magnitude and possibly the duration of shock pressure to which coastal structures might be subjected.