Research and Development of New Breakwater Design Methods and Tools

随着与气候相关的沿海环境变化和世界海岸线沿线人口密度的增加，沿海防护结构的设计从未像现在这样重要。防波堤通常由岩石或混凝土堆砌而成，通常是抵御海岸线侵蚀和风暴引发的洪水的第一道也是最后一道防线。虽然防波堤对保护我们的海岸线至关重要，但施加在它们身上的力量却没有得到很好的理解。因此，用于设计几乎所有其他土木工程结构的力平衡方法在目前的防波堤设计方法中并不适用。相反，它们的设计方式基本上与50年前相同，通过应用从实验室测试中获得的有限数据集和从过去的防波堤失败中吸取的定性教训。拟议的研究项目将试图在渥太华大学和Baird W.F. & Associates之间的学术-工业合作项目中解决对新型可靠设计工具的迫切需求。该项目的第一阶段将包括在加拿大国家研究委员会进行的一个广泛的实验计划，以调查通过防波堤装甲层的流动和施加在单个装甲单元上的水动力。研究结果将用于建立描述装甲层水力稳定性的新数学关系，并进一步研究新提出的模拟波浪-装甲层相互作用的数值模型的有效性。在实验过程中发现的控制装甲层稳定性的物理过程将被纳入数值模型，以改进其所基于的物理。新的设计公式和尖端的数值模型将被Baird W.F. & Associates使用，以在国际舞台上获得基于可靠性的海岸防护结构设计的竞争优势。在未来的50年里，加拿大和国外数百（可能数千）公里的海岸防护结构可能需要升级，利用这些新的设计方法的机会将继续以越来越快的速度出现

With the anticipated climate-related changes to coastal environments and increasing population densities along the worlds' shorelines, the design of coastal protection structures has never been more important. Breakwaters, typically constructed as rubble mounds of rock or concrete units, often serve as the first and last line of defense against shoreline erosion and storm-induced flooding. Although breakwaters are critical to protecting our shorelines, the forces exerted on them are not well understood. Consequently, the force balance approach used to design virtually all other civil engineering structures is not applied in current design methods for breakwaters. Instead, they are largely designed in the same manner as they were 50 years ago, through the application of limited data sets derived from laboratory tests and qualitative lessons learned from past breakwater failures. The proposed research project will attempt to address this acute need for new and reliable design tools in an academic-industry collaborative project between the University of Ottawa and Baird W.F. & Associates. The first stage of the project will consist of an extensive experimental program performed at the National Research Council of Canada to investigate the flow through breakwater armour layers and the hydrodynamic forces exerted on individual armour units. The results will be used to develop new mathematical relationships describing the hydraulic stability of armour layers, and to further investigate the validity of a newly proposed numerical model for simulating wave-armour layer interactions. Physical-based processes governing armour layer stability, uncovered during the experimental program, will be incorporated into the numerical model to improve the physics on which it is based. The new design formulae and cutting-edge numerical model will be used by Baird W.F. & Associates to gain a competitive edge on the international stage for the reliability-based design of coastal protection structures. With hundreds (potentially thousands) of kilometers of coastal protection structures in Canada and abroad likely requiring upgrades over the next 50 years, opportunities to exploit these new design methods will continue to emerge at an increasing rate.**