The Uncertainty in the Prediction of the Distribution of Individual Wave Overtopping Volumes Using a Nonlinear Shallow Water Equation Solver

ABSTRACT Williams, H.E.; Briganti, R.; Pullen, T., and Dodd, N., 2016. The uncertainty in the prediction of the distribution of individual wave overtopping volumes using a nonlinear shallow water equation solver. This work analyses the uncertainty of the prediction of individual overtopping volumes using the nonlinear shallow water equations. A numerical model is used to analyse the variability from seeding. The effect of the incident wave height distribution on the distribution of individual overtopping volume is also considered. The numerical results are then compared with both the laboratory tests and available empirical methods. A large variability was found across the distributions, which produced some results showing significant diversion from the empirical prediction methods. The magnitude of that departure was directly related to the accuracy of the numerical model in reproducing the incident wave height distribution at the toe of the structure in the physical model.