A wave-flume study of scour at a pile breakwater: Solitary waves

Understanding the sediment transport and the resulting scour around coastal structures such as pile breakwaters under local extreme wave conditions is important for the foundation safety of various coastal structures. This study reports a wave-flume experiment investigating the scour induced by solitary waves at a pile breakwater, which consists of a row of closely spaced large piles. A wave blacking gate with a simple operation procedure in the experiment was designed to eliminate possible multiple reflections of the solitary wave inside the flume. An underwater laser scanner and a point probe were used in combination to provide high-resolution data of the bed profile around the pile breakwater. Effects of incident wave height and local water depth on the maximum scour depth, the maximum deposition height and the total scour and deposition volumes were examined. An existing empirical formula describing the evolution of the scour at a single pile in current or waves was extended to describe the scour at the pile breakwater under the action of multiple solitary waves, and new empirical coefficients were obtained by fitting the formula to the new experimental data to estimate the equilibrium scour depth. It appears that the maximum scour depth and the total scour volume are two reliable quantities for validation of numerical models developed for the scour around pile breakwaters under highly nonlinear wave conditions.