Physical modelling of damage progression on breakwaters

In October/November 2017 Jeroen van den Bos and Bas Hofland joined a team of European researchers in an investigation of physical modelling techniques in a laboratory wave basin in Hannover. The tests were aimed at the application of novel measurement techniques to obtain a better representation of the damage progression of breakwaters.

A breakwater was tested that resembled a typical Portuguese breakwater. Researchers from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands joined the tests that were part of the EU-funded Hydralab programme. The contribution of TU Delft was to add fully stand-alone miniature measurement equipment inside several of the armour elements, to measure the motion of the armour units during the tests. The impact velocities of the 'rocking' armour units can be important to evaluate the strength of the concrete armour units. The past years two master's students have already studied this phenomena in cooperation with RHDHV and Deltares, and with all new data that was obtained more studies will follow.

The tests with the 3D printed model units, are described in an article in the H2O magazine.