A preliminary study on Typhoon Tim induced resonance at Hualien Harbor, Taiwan

New analysis of wave records at Hualien Harbor during Typhoon Tim in 1994 reveals that for certain wave periods, the ratios of measured wave heights among three available wave stations inside the harbor are unique and roughly remain the same during the severest period of resonance. Since there is no incident infragravity wave (period from 80 to 220 s) information at offshore boundaries, these unique ratios become the surrogate of background truth for checking the performance of numerical simulations. A new simulation effort using a large (45 × 17 km) modeling domain, high-resolution (20 × 20 m) grid and the RIDE wave transformation model were conducted to simulate the observed responses. Comparison of the modeling results with the observations showed reasonable agreement. Additional model studies using ideal bathymetries with the same grid domain and resolution were also conducted to help interpret the prototype modeling results. The effects of two types of commonly used remedies were first examined by using the ideal bathymetry, and then, the prototype bathymetry. The results demonstrated that a single 1-km long, shore-parallel breakwater could significantly reduce the resonance. The results of using three shore-parallel breakwaters, however, are no better. More studies to identify the optimum design associated with the shore-parallel breakwater (location, length, etc.) are necessary for the optimum reduction of resonance at Hualien Harbor.