• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.286-304
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• 2017

In this study, we proposed a new-type of circular perforated caisson breakwater consisting of a bundle of latticed blocks that can be applied to a small port such as a fishing port, and numerically investigated the hydraulic characteristics of the breakwater. The numerical method used in this study is OLAFOAM which newly added wave generation module, porous media analysis module and reflected wave control module based on OpenFOAM that is open source CFD software published under the GPL license. To investigate the applicability of OLAFOAM, the variations of wave pressure acting on the three-dimensional slit caisson were compared to the previous experimental results under the regular wave conditions, and then the performance for irregular waves was examined from the reproducibility of the target irregular waves and frequency spectrum analysis. As a result, a series of numerical simulations for the new-type of circular perforated caisson breakwaters, which is similar to slit caisson breakwater, was carried out under the irregular wave actions. The hydraulic characteristics of the breakwater such as wave overtopping, reflection, and wave pressure distribution were carefully investigated respect to the significant wave height and period, the wave chamber width, and the interconnectivity between them. The numerical results revealed that the wave pressure acting on the new-type of circular perforated caisson breakwaters was considerably smaller than the result of the impermeable vertical wall computed by the Goda equation. Also, the reflection of the new-type caisson breakwater was similar to the variation range of the reflection coefficient of the existing slit caisson breakwater.