Breakwater Caisson Design Lecture

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The full lecture can be viewed at CAISSON DESIGN VERIFICATION.  This lecture was presented at the ASCE COPRI 2018 Houston Chapter Conference.

A cross section through the main breakwater is shown below:

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Wave forces and safety factors against sliding and overturning are computed with Excel and shown in the Excel chart below:

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The installation requires afloat stability checks as the caisson is removed from the semi-submersible barge.

The Excel package goes on to calculate motions of the floating structure in waves, based on closed form analytical solutions.

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For each degree of freedom, the diffraction and Froude-Krilov forces are discretely calculated for wave attack in the primary plane of motion, at a range of wave periods.  Mechanical admittance is calculated and dynamic response is computed.  Response at intermediate attack angles is interpolated.

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This paper describes coastal civil engineering and naval architecture good practices applied to design optimization of concrete caissons, typically constructed by slipforming.

Always check results with experienced engineers and naval architects.  It is easy to make mistakes in input data.