LARGE SCALE PHYSICAL MODEL EXPERIMENTS OF HYBRID GREEN-GRAY STRUCTURE PERFORMANCE FOR OVERTOPPING MITIGATION

Coastal regions across the globe are facing grand challenges associated with climate change, sea level rise, and increasing coastal flood hazard conditions. Effects of these threats are exacerbated by rising population densities and as aging infrastructure reaches or exceeds its design life. Therefore, finding sustainable, resilient adaptation alternatives is paramount to protecting coastlines and nearshore assets. This project presents the results of a large-scale (1:2) physical model experiment at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory investigating the performance of a combined mangrove + bulkhead design and mangrove + revetment design to mitigate overtopping under a range of incident wave conditions. Multiple mangrove forest densities were considered. Subsequent tests were performed at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) at a 1:8 geometric scale to investigate potential scaling effects for reduced-scale experiments.