WALOWA (WAVE LOADS ON WALLS) - LARGE SCALE EXPERIMENTS IN THE DELTA FLUME

WaLoWa stands for Wave Loads on Walls and is a Hydralab+ project funded by the European Union. Ghent University (Belgium), TU Delft (The Netherlands), RWTH Aachen (Germany), Politechnico Bari and University of Florence (Italy) and Flanders Hydraulics Research (Belgium) are jointly working on the WaLoWa project. The user team leader is Ghent University. The WaLoWa project is hosted by Deltares and the Delta Flume facility.

When storm walls and buildings are located on top of a dike or promenade, overtopping waves can induce large forces on these structures as has e.g. been observed at the Belgian coast which has a specifically shallow foreshore. Especially during storm season and in times of sea level rise these loads can be highly destructive. It is therefore the key objective of WaLoWa to study overtopped wave loads on structures situated on top of a dike and in shallow foreshore conditions.