Study On Properties Of Caisson Breakwater As Owc Under Irregular Waves

Caisson breakwater as OWC is a new coastal engineering structure, which is designed above the similar features between caisson breakwater and onshore OWC wave energy convertor. This structure can not only prevent wave, but also convert wave energy into electricity. Also, Caisson chamber as OWC air chamber reduces engineering cost. The study carries out the task through unit analysis and experimental investigations.Model test includes wave pressure test and energy capturing effect research. According to liner wave theory, a wave pressure formula is derived for caisson with a scale hole. Compared with experiment contests, the result indicates that the theoretical derivation is acceptable.Energy capturing effect model experiment is carried out to obtain wave height in caisson chamber, air pressure in caisson chamber, and air velocity in the duct. The model test data show that there are interior relations among wave height, air pressure, and air velocity, the energy capturing efficiency is mostly determined by incident wave elements, water depth, draft of the chamber skirt and load parameters. To capture more energy, the structure with low draft of the chamber skirt needs to run under the condition of big wave height and long period.Conversion efficiency of caisson chamber is obtained from test data, and it has the same trend as the energy capturing.The research is based on model test, the characteristic of structure under irregular waves is obtained, which lays a foundation to further study.