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Numerical Simulations of Waves Breaking over a Rectangular Submerged Reef Consisting of a Double Step: Analogies with massive Natural Wave Breaking over Abrupt Bathymetries

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Abstract

The aim of this article is not to study any practical design for a breakwater device nor to show the evidence of a particular event when waves break over a varying bathymetry, but to promote a paper showing an interesting idea of wave decomposition prior to impact, used in an experimental and numerical study published by Yasuda et al. (Proceedings 25th international conferences coastal engineering, pp 300–313, 1996) and Yasuda et al. (Coast Eng J 41(2): 269–280, 1999. We investigated the new type of breaker, proposed by Yasuda et al. (1996), by detailing several geometric aspects which lead to the unusual size and behavior of some very large plunging jets generated when waves break above some drastic changes of bathymetry. We thoroughly investigated all geometrical aspects of the breaking process, to propose a classification of the breaker types which were observed in our numerical results. We indicated the influences of the reef parameters (steps heights and lengths) on the subsequent breaking process. We also showed that the air entrainment was indeed much larger during the composite breaker occurrence.

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Data Availability Statement

Movies and pictures generated from the numerical simulations can be made available on reasonable request. The numerical tool used to generate the simulations is an open-source tool, available from: https://notus-cfd.org/. Source code available from: https://git.notus-cfd.org/notus/notus.

Notes

  1. Notus CFD code: http://www.notus-cfd.org is developed in the I2M Laboratory.

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Acknowledgements

This study was carried out with financial support from the French State, managed by the French National Research Agency (ANR) in the frame of the “Investments for the future” Programme IdEx Bordeaux-SysNum (ANR-10-IDEX-03-02). The authors wish to thank the Aquitaine Regional Council for the financial support towards a 432-processor cluster investment, located in the I2M laboratory. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of CINES, under allocation A0012A06104 made by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif). Computer time for this study was also provided by the computing facilities MCIA (Mésocentre de Calcul Intensif Aquitain) of the Université de Bordeaux and of the Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour.

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  1. CNRS, Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, INRAE, I2M Bordeaux, 33400, Talence, France

    Florian Desmons & Pierre Lubin

  2. School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Pierre Lubin

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  1. Florian Desmons
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Desmons, F., Lubin, P. Numerical Simulations of Waves Breaking over a Rectangular Submerged Reef Consisting of a Double Step: Analogies with massive Natural Wave Breaking over Abrupt Bathymetries. Water Waves 4, 379–407 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42286-022-00067-3

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