A Laboratory Analysis of Solitary Wave Run-Up in the Presence of Submerged Barriers

In this work, the phenomenon of the reduction of wave run-up induced by solitary waves through submerged barriers has been investigated.Despite several researches were carried out to study this kind of physical process, a robust determination of the efficiency of submerged rigid barriers in the reduction of solitary wave run-up on plane beaches in a wide range of wave conditions and beach slopes is still lacking. In this context, laboratory tests were undertaken in the wave channel of the University of Calabria by adopting three beach slopes, three water depths and a rectangular barrier.Two different approaches were used to calculate the solitary wave run-up through semi-analytical formulas. The first one refers to its empirical determination as a function of wave non-linearity, relative height of the barrier and beach slope. The second one, more physically based, is due to its empirical calculation on the basis of the wave energy, relative height of the barrier and beach slope.