Winyu Rattanapitikon and Thirapat Vivattanasirisak

pp. 663 - 674

Abstract

The breaker height is an essential requirement for design of coastal structures, as well as for the
prediction of wave height transformation and beach deformation. Many formulas have been proposed
to compute the breaker height. However, most of the existing breaker height formulas were developed
based primarily on measured data from small-scale experiments. It is doubtful that those formulas are
applicable in large-scale experimental conditions, which are more representatives of natural conditions.
In this study, the predictive capability of 29 existing breaker height formulas is examined by comparison
against measured data from the large-scale experiments of CRIEPI (1983) and SUPERTANK (1994). The
comparison shows that the errors of the selected formulas vary from 8.7% to 69.4%. Overall, the formulas
that give very good predictions are those by Ostendorf and Madsen (1979), Larson and Kraus (1989),
Gourlay (1992), and Rattanapitikon and Shibayama (2000).

Keywords

• breaking index
• breaking wave height
• breaker height