Experimental study of shallow water solitary wave impacts on a bottom-constrained flexible wall

Abstract

This work investigates wave impacts on the flexible wall. An experiment was conducted to investigate shallow water solitary wave impacts on a flexible wall, and the results are presented. During the experiment, the water depth (h) varied between 0.22 and 0.3 m, the ratio of incident wave height and the water depth (H/h) varied between 0.1 and 0.5. The bottom of the flexible wall was constrained while the top end remained free, with the lowest dry natural frequency being 14.2 Hz. The experiment identified various types of wave impacts, including the flip-through impact without aeration, the low-aeration impact, the high-aeration impact, and the broken wave impact. Subsequently, an analysis was conducted to explore the characteristics of impact pressures, slamming phenomena, and structural deflections under these different impact types. Furthermore, we directed our attention to the correlation between wave conditions and structural dynamic response, discovering that a linear fit adequately describes the relationship between the maximum structural displacement and the relative wave height under the current experimental conditions. This study can be beneficial in enhancing our understanding of wave impacts on flexible walls and provides a solid foundation for future work.