Introduction to coastal structures

This one-day course introduces the key issues of coastal processes, and design methods for coastal structures, including seawalls, breakwaters, vertical walls, piers and jetties. Strong emphasis is placed on understanding the concepts, being familiar with representative parameters and with key prediction methods, so includes hands-on tutorials through the course.

The course will introduce key issues in coastal engineering, vulnerabilities of different coastlines (developed and natural), and the key drivers for flooding/erosion threats. The effects of encounter probability, climate change, wave forecasting, wave transformations and depth-limited breaking will be described and key issues will be explored in tutorial exercises.

A wide range of coastal structures will be covered including breakwaters, seawalls and shoreline revetments as well as elevated decks. The key responses covered will be wave overtopping prediction and/or crest level calculation, and armour size determination. Simple methods to estimate wave loads will also be covered.

At the end of the course, the participants will:

• Be familiar key coastal processes affecting the design of coastal structures;
• Be aware of the types and breadth of coastal structures in use;
• Have hands-on experience of key input parameters, application of prediction tools, and understand levels of confidence for their calculations;
• Understand the significance of different sources of guidance, including recent research results;
• Be able to devise alternative solutions with confidence by understanding key coastal process, and by their experience of the main prediction methods.