Spectral Analysis of Wave Transmission Behind Submerged Breakwaters
Spectral Analysis of Wave Transmission Behind Submerged Breakwaters
Spectral Analysis of Wave Transmission Behind Submerged Breakwaters
Diego Vicinanza
ABSTRACT
Submerged breakwaters are becoming popular alternative to coastal
protection where a moderate degree of energy transmission is
acceptable. Such situations induce a complicate wave field because of
non-linear wave-structure interactions. In front and behind the
structures local scour and changes of the bottom topography may take
place due to the wave field. This paper will present some results from
large scale model tests conducted at the Grosser WellenKanal of
Hannover, Germany. The decomposition phenomenon of nonlinear
wave trains passing over a submerged breakwater has been
investigated. Spectral energy distribution and total amount of energy
within the spectra of mono-component wave trains shows a significant
dependency on the position of wave gages in the wake of the barrier
since all Fourier based analysis techniques are incapable to identify
non-stationary processes. The Hilbert-Huang Transformation (HHT) is
chosen to operate as a more appropriate tool to better understand the
nonlinear processes of the transmitted transient waves induced by the
presence of the obstacle. Results of this technique are shown and prove
that the non-stationary sea states behind the structure are essentially
composed of individual dispersive waves which are phase shifted in the
wake of the structure and propagating individually to generate a beat
effect.
Real sea waves are non-linear and non-stationary and their profile is
asymmetrical with regarding the zero level. The existence of small
ripples riding longer waves, as well as the creation of many small
waves resulting from wave breaking, complicates considerably the sea
surface profile. The wave data records are a mixture of various wave
systems with different periods and energy, generated by different
sources.
INTRODUCTION
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Gauge
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
X [m]
79.05
81.15
84.85
90.29
115
126.22
151.2
162.4
176.3
177.45
180
185.3
Gauge
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
The model tests were carried out at the Grosser Wellen Kanal of
Hannover, Germany (Calabrese et al., 2003).
The wave flume has a length of 300 m, a width of 5 m and a depth of 7
m (Fig. 1). The facility is equipped with a piston type paddle for
generating regular and random waves. The installed power of the piston
type wave generator combined with an upper flap is about 900 kW. The
gearwheel driven carrier gives a maximum stroke of 2.10 m to the
wave paddle.
The wave generation is controlled by an online absorption system. This
special system works with all kinds of regular and irregular wave trains.
Thus, the tests are unaffected by re-reflections at the wave generator
and can be carried out over nearly unlimited duration.
The bathymetry in the flume was formed by moulding sand over fill in
the channel to the required shape. From deep water near the paddle, the
seabed was flat for 105.3 m than it sloped initially at 1:20 for 20 m to
change for a more gentle slope of 1:50, and terminated in a 15 m
horizontal section. The bed level at the test structure was + 3 m relative
to the flume floor at the wave paddle.
To minimize effects of any reflection from the end of the flume, an
absorbing sand beach with 1:18 slope was built. A 1.3 m high rubble
mound breakwater was installed on a flat area at the end of 1:50 sand
beach.
Three different cross sections were tested (Fig. 2):
a) 1 m crown width, with an impermeable sheet in the middle of the
structure;
b) 1 m crown width, without impermeable sheet in the middle of the
structure;
c) 4 m crown width, without impermeable sheet in the middle of the
structure.
Front and rear slopes were kept constant, equal to 1:2. Five s.w.l. have
been changed in order to obtain different configurations ranging from
low crested to submerged. To measure the wave characteristics, a set of
24 probes was sampled at 50 Hz. In Table 1 are reported all the gauges
position.
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X [m]
197
198.09
200.42
205.3
217.5
218.5
220.72
225.3
235.5
236.5
238.52
243.1
RESULTS
The HHT has been applied for test n. 20, representing a regular wave
having the following wave characteristics:
H = 0.8 m, T = 3.0 s, swl = 1.5 m (at the structure)
The breakwater dimensions for this test are shown in Figure 2.
The main idea of EMD is first to identify the time scale that will reveal
the physical characteristics of the studied process recorded as a time
series, and to extract them into Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF). The
EMD is a data sifting process to eliminate locally riding waves as well
as to eliminate locally the asymmetry of the time series profile.
A procedure for data sifting and several applications of HHT method
are presented in (Huang et al., 1998). On the basis of the results of
EMD of the field wave data, Veltcheva (Veltcheva, 2001) investigated
wave and group transformation in the coastal zone. The time series X(t)
is first decomposed by EMD into a finite number of IMF which extract
the energy associated with various intrinsic time scales and residual.
The superposition of the IMF, C, and the residue, r, reconstruct the data
record:
X (t ) =
C j (t ) + r (t )
(1)
C j =
PV
C j (t ' )
t t'
dt '
2:1
j =1
Rc=0.2m
hc=1.3m
h=1.5m
B=1.0m
(4)
mi =
f i E ( f ) df
i = 0, 1, 2, ...
(5)
(2)
where PV is the principal Cauchy value. The amplitude aj, the phase j,
and the instantaneous frequency j are calculated as follow:
m0
0.0044
0.0046
0.0051
0.0056
m1
0.0147
0.0153
0.0168
0.0167
m2
0.081
0.076
0.075
0.068
0.805799
0.702455
0.653841
0.604494
Hm0
0.264
0.271
0.284
0.299
Tp
3.03
3.03
3.03
3.03
a j (t ) = C 2j (t ) + C 2j (t )
C (t )
j (t ) = arctan
C (t )
j (t ) =
(3)
However, this regular wave gets seriously disturbed when passing the
submerged barrier.
d j (t )
dt
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To a certain extent these time series at positions 17, 18, 19 and 20 are
neither regular nor identical to each other, although a kind of irregular
harmonic motion is examined at each wave gage. The spectral energy
distributions and corresponding phases partially prove this observation.
Whereas the incident regular wave in front of the barrier is composed
of one fundamental frequency f = 1/T = 0.3 Hz without any
superharmonic components, the spectral energy distributions from the
wave gages behind the barrier expose the existence of superharmonic
components.
Similarly to the water surface elevations, these spectra are not identical
and the energy content of the fundamental and superharmonic
components are dissimilar for each position. This effect is proven by
calculating both the variance .
This is a rather unanticipated phenomenon for a physical process, but
occurs as a result of the fact that Fourier based techniques characterize
a time series mathematically from a global point of view in a general
form of a finite number of time-invariant sinusoidal operators
(Schlurmann, 2000; Schlurmann, 2002).
This particular effect becomes obvious by regarding the fact that the
irregular wave behind the structure is a superposition of two individual
regular waves one incident component with period T induced by the
motion of the wavemaker and another two components with periods
T/2 and T/3 which develops just due to the presence of the barrier.
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CONCLUSIONS
Time series of regular and irregular water surface elevations from
various experimental configurations in a laboratory wave flume
concerning the hydrodynamic performance of submerged breakwater.
At first the analyses have been conducted of with time series analysis
methods and Fourier analysis techniques. The decomposition
phenomenon of nonlinear wave trains (e.g. Massel, 1983) has been
observed. It is shown that large amounts of energy accumulated in
bounded superharmonic components in shallow water regions over the
reef, are abruptly transferred into freely propagating superharmonic
components in the wake of the structure in deeper regions.
In a next step the Hilbert-Huang Transformation (HHT) is applied to
demonstrate the nonlinear decomposition process of the transmitted
transient wave trains.
Results are shown and prove that the nonstationary and nonlinear wave
trains are essentially composed of individual dispersive wave
components which are phase shifted, and propagate individually to
generate a beat effect. It is remarkable that the components frequencies
change over time harmonically, but are at the same time strongly
correlated with the water surface elevation. This apparent affinity
between frequencies and water surface elevations has not been reported
in literature up to now.
REFERENCES
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