Design mound breakwaters
The basic design factor for mound breakwaters involves calculating the weight of the main armor unit elements. This factor largely determines how a breakwater will be designed and how much it will eventually cost, because this weight factor has a direct effect on the size and thickness of all the breakwater layers (armor, filters and core), and thus the total volume of material.
Hudson’s equation, which was made popular in the Shore Protection Manual, is generally used in predesign:
W is the weight of the pieces that make up the main armor unit; wr and ww are the specific weights of the concrete and the water, respectively; H is the design wave height; α is the structure slope angle with respect to horizontal; and KD is the stability coefficient, which depends on the shape of the main armor unit pieces, their roughness, how the pieces interlock and on the zone where the breakwater is to be located (trunk or round-head).
