To meet up with the requirements of the Flemish Government, the Belgian coastline needs a protection to a storm with a return period of 1000 years. At well-chosen locations, storm walls will be built, and for the structural design of these walls the impact loadings need to be known. Tests have been carried out at full scale in the Grosser Wellen Kanal, to determine the impact loads by overtopping bores. Wave overtopping over the crest of the dike occurs, and the overtopping bore progresses along the horizontal crest of the dike before impacting the storm wall. It is of major importance that such a wall can withstand the impacts. This paper describes the hydraulic process on the crest of the dike, expressed with parameters such as flow depth and flow velocity, and links them to the impact measured on the storm wall. Both pressures and forces are measured, and compared to each other.

This study is based on the data obtained from tests carried out in the Large Wave Flume (Grosser Wellenkanal (GWK)) in Hannover in the frame of a joint research project of Ghent University (Belgium) and Forschungszentrum Küste (FZK, Germany). The goal of the research project is to determine the wave induced loads on vertical storm walls located at the end of overtopped dike, which are designed to protect coastal cities from overtopping and floods. The loads resulting from waves overtopping the dike and impacting the vertical wall as a bore are measured by means of both force and pressure sensors. This paper describes the results of pressure and force records at the vertical wall, including a comparative analysis of the overall forces obtained by pressure integration and force sensors for two different wall setups: Fully blocked wall and partially blocked wall.

The contribution of wave energy to the renewable energy supply is rising. To extract a considerable amount of wave power, Wave Energy Converters (WECs) are arranged in several rows or in a ‘farm’. WECs in a farm are interacting (e.g. The presence of other WECs influence the operational behaviour of a single WEC) and the overall power absorption is affected. In this paper wake effects in the lee of a single WEC and multiple WECs of the overtopping type, where the water volume of overtopped waves is first captured in a basin above mean sea level and then drains back to the sea through hydro turbines, are studied in a time-dependent mild-slope equation model. The wake behind a single WEC is investigated for uni- and multi-directional incident waves. The wake becomes wider for larger wave peak periods. An increasing directional spreading results in a faster wave regeneration and a shorter wake behind the WEC. The wake in the lee of multiple WECs is calculated for two different farm lay-outs, i.e. an aligned grid and a staggered grid, with varying lateral and longitudinal spacing. In general, the staggered grid results in the highest overall wave power absorption.