Our team undertakes coastal and marine assessments that consider how waves enter and interact with harbours, breakwaters, and other structures. This work is important to understand wave behaviour within constructed harbours and to estimate wave conditions at vessel berths, which can be affected by wave propagation, shoaling, diffraction and reflection processes.
We commonly use XBeach, an open-source numerical model originally developed to simulate hydrodynamic and morpho dynamic processes on sandy coasts. Throughout the model development, it has increasingly been upgraded to simulate complex structures, and validated against analytical, laboratory and field test cases. The model now includes:
- Short wave transformation (refraction, shoaling and breaking).
- Long wave (infragravity wave) transformation (generation, propagation, and dissipation).
- Non-hydrostatic wave diffraction.
- Wave-induced setup and unsteady currents.
- Over wash and inundation.
A big benefit of the XBeach model is that it is Open Source, free to download and comes with a great following through the community website. Give it a go via this link: https://oss.deltares.nl/web/xbeach/
