Details

Wave and water level induced forces have to be calculated for a protection structure to be used while the maintenance of the gates at the sluices at Den Oever and Kornwerderzand in the Afsluitdijk takes place. For this reason, hydraulic boundary conditions have to be derived and later converted into forces to be able to design the protection structure. The hydraulic boundary conditions are derived for summer conditions as the maintainenance of the gates will only take place during summer months. These summer conditions are derived based on an extreme value analysis of winds that are later correlated to wave conditions obtained in previous studies, other tools as Hydra-K and Hydra-Zoet, are used for validation. Based on the hydraulic boundary conditions the expected maximum force on the portable cofferdam was estimated. A 2D numerical Comflow model was used to obtain the forces on the top part and the velocities near the bottom part of the structure. The velocities were transferred to forces using a Morison approach. The influence of 3D effects was discussed and estimated.