Artificial Reef Design in a 2 Dimension Vertical Plane
Evangelos Koutandos
Artificial reefs (ARs) are submerged breakwaters that serve several purposes. They consist mainly of prefabricated concrete blocks of cubic or cylindrical shapes with holes of varying diameter and depth, placed on the seabed and aiming to enrich the marine life of a given area. They provide shelter and facilitate the attraction of several species, thus increasing the commercial and non-commercial fisheries resources in the surrounding area. They also protect the local coastline and increase the environmental value of the area where they are situated. The suitability of the area of installation is carefully determined and depends on the substrate type, type inclination wave action, a number of physiochemical water column parameters, and the vicinity of natural reefs and Posidonia oceanica meadows.
Limited research has been done on the influence of the submergence and the length of the reef slope on the breaker type, even though this is important for the design of the reef in terms of surfability. A preliminary design was achieved step by step, making use of the theory and state of the art of multifunctional ARs (Voorde et al. 2009a, 2009b).
This paper describes the numerical study conducted to analyze the influences of three main relevant parameters in the vertical plane, namely the following: the submergence, the length of the crest of the reef, and the porosity of the reef. The investigation was conducted using the COBRAS numerical wave model, Liu et al. (1999), Liu et al. (2000), Garcia et al. (2004), Koutandos (2006a), Koutandos (2006b), and Koutandos (2017) in the vertical plane, and the main results and conclusions are described and presented herein.
Keywords: Artificial Reefs, Reef Parameters, Artificial Reefs Design