1. Introduction

breakwater was developed during my master thesis, see the report here. The objective of my thesis was to develop a design automation tool that is able to quickly design different types of breakwaters during the design process. In this introductory chapter the purpose, background and features of thee tool are discussed.

1.1. Purpose

The main goal of the tool is to support the designer in exploring different types of breakwaters, see Figure 1.1 for a cross section of the breakwater types defined by CIRIA, CUR, CETMEF (2007). The main use case of the tool is thus to make a conceptual design of a breakwater using one of the design classes, see Chapter 7. However, because all functions and classes are also available from breakwater.core it is also possible to develop your own design automation script.

Typical cross sections of various types of breakwaters, with the rubble mound types on the left and the monolithic types on the right. Redrawn from CIRIA, CUR, CETMEF (2007, p.781)

Figure 1.1: Typical cross sections of various types of breakwaters, with the rubble mound types on the left and the monolithic types on the right. Redrawn from CIRIA, CUR, CETMEF (2007, p.781)

Note

Due to the limited time not all breakwater types defined by CIRIA, CUR, CETMEF (2007) could be implemented. Currently only the following structures have been implemented: conventional rubble mound breakwaters with rock and armour units as armour layer, caisson breakwaters and vertically composite breakwaters.

1.2. Background Information

Over the past years several tools have been developed to support the designer during the breakwater design process, see Figure 1.2. For example the tools developed by Sijbesma (2019) and Laenen (2000), who both used a probabilistic design approach to design breakwaters. The tool of Sijbesma (2019) only includes the conventional rubble mound breakwater with rock as armour layer, where the tool of Laenen (2000) also includes a caisson breakwater. However, the freedom of the designer is limited in the tool of Laenen (2000) as, for instance, the crest width is fixed to 8.6 m.

Furthermore, most tools are not open source available, and can thus not be used by other designers, or for educational purposes. Moreover, during interviews it appeared that a probabilistic design approach is perceived as a disadvantage by designers as such a design approach often results in a too conservative, and thus too expansive design. The main argument against using probabilistic design approaches is that there is often a lack of data to effectively use a probabilistic design approach (Winkel, 2020).

However, the use of generating, and exploring more concepts is beneficial for the design process, as Davila Delgado and Hofmeyer (2013) showed in their experimental study. Furthermore, the reports of McKinsey&Company (2017) and Deloitte (2019) state that the construction industry needs to adopt new digital technologies to increase the efficiency and productivity, which has been lagging compared to other industries over the past decades.

Therefore, breakwater aims to automate the synthesis, simulation and evaluation steps of the conceptual design phase, see Figure 1.2. This is done to support the designer in exploring concepts, so that the designer can investigate the influence of several parameters on the design and cost.

visualization of the general design approach as described in Winkel (2020)

Figure 1.2: General design approach as described in Winkel (2020)

1.3. Features

breakwater offers the following features to support the designer:

  • Design a rubble mound breakwater with rock or concrete armour units as armour layer, with bw.RockRubbleMound or bw.ConcreteRubbleMound
  • Design a vertical or vertically composite breakwater with bw.Caisson
  • Design with an interactive design application by using bw.interactive_design. With this application several parameters can be changed with sliders, to assess the influence of certain parameters on the design and cost.
  • Design multiple breakwaters at ones by using bw.Configurations. With this class multiple breakwater types can be designed at ones, these concepts can than be assess by using a multi-criteria analysis or with the DesignExplorer.
  • Use the functions and classes from breakwater.core to create your own design automation approach. The breakwater.core consist of all functions and classes defined in Chapters 8 to 11

1.4. Getting Started

This documentation provides all information required to install the package, see Chapter 2, and start designing breakwaters with Python, all subsequent chapters.