Hydrodynamic Performance of a New Box-type Floating Breakwater with a Protruding Bottom Plate

Floating breakwaters can effectively resist wave impacts and maintain a relatively calm water environment. To solve the problem of insufficient wave attenuation performance of traditional box-type floating breakwaters with increasing wave periods, a new box-type floating breakwater (NFB) with a protruding bottom plate was proposed in this study. Based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach, a series of numerical simulations of the interaction between regular waves and floating breakwaters were carried out. The evolution of the vortices and the wave dissipation mechanism of the NFB were investigated. The effect of the change in the dimension of the protruding bottom plate of the NFB on the hydrodynamic performance was analysed, and a reasonable length of the protruding bottom plate was recommended. Finally, the hydrodynamic performance of the proposed approach was compared with that of the traditional box-type floating breakwaters under identical breakwater draft and width conditions. The results showed that the transmission coefficient of the NFB is improved by approximately 20% on average, and the reflection coefficient, maximum horizontal wave forces and negative maximum vertical wave forces are significantly reduced, indicating that the NFB has good application prospects.