Experimental Comparison of Catamaran and T Type Floating Breakwaters

In this paper, the influence of draft depth of a floating breakwater (FB) with an/two attached plate is studied experimentally and results are compared for different shapes. In addition, the influence of height of incident wave is studied and reflection, transmission and energy dissipation coefficients are calculated. For the modelstudies, a wave flume with a flap-type wave generator and a steep wave absorber was designed, constructed, and used to investigate the performance of floating breakwater under regular waves. With increasing in relative draft of FB, the performance of FB is enhanced remarkably, in other words, the reflection and energy dissipation coefficients increase and transmission coefficient decreases by penetration of attached plate inwater column. For waves with greater heights, the reflection coefficient increases significantly. According to this study, catamaran type FB (FB with attached plates in its front and back) has a better performance rather than T type FB (FB with attached plate in the middle part of the keel structure).

Keywords:

Floating Breakwater , Reflection , Transmission , Energy Dissipation