A CFD approach to rubble mound breakwater design

Abstract The paper provides some developments of a numerical approach (“Numerical Calculation of Flow Within Armour Units”, FWAU) to the design of rubble mound breakwaters. The hydrodynamics of wave induced flow within the interstices of concrete blocks is simulated by making use of advanced, but well tested, CFD techniques to integrate RANS equations. While computationally very heavy, FWAU is gaining ground, due to its obvious advantages over the “porous media”, i.e. the possibility of accounting for the highly non stationary effects, the reduced need of ad hoc calibration of filtration parameters and also – in perspective – the evaluation of hydrodynamic forces on single blocks. FWAU however is a complex technique, and in order to turn it into a practical design tool, a number of difficulties have to be overcome. The paper presents recent results about this validation, as well as insight into fluid dynamical aspects.