Damage measurements and images on low-crested breakwaters

Low-crested and submerged structures (LCS) help stabilize beach nourishment and shorelines to minimize visual and water circulation impacts. In an era of climate change, it is essential to understand LCS resilience. There are gaps in the understanding of damage progression in LCS. This study's objectives were to i) explore the importance of LCS stability variables, ii) extend the existing datasets with a data collection campaign, and iii) formulate a damage progression model on an extended dataset. A scale model testing programme added 124 new data points and confirms the importance of relative crest height, period, increased vulnerability of the seaward slope, and crest and damage progression. The proposed model predicted damage similar to the pooled data and offered insights into the importance of i) seaward slope erosion, ii) drag and lift forces, iii) Shield’s stress relationships to relative depth, stone size, Reynolds number and gradation, and iv) non-linearity of damage progression.