Fabio Dentale

• University of Salerno

The role of adaptive solutions for reducing coastal risks is a crucial issue that is increasingly captivating the coastal community. The present work analyzes attached/detached rubble mound breakwaters designed to protect vertical walls with very shallow foreshores. In particular, we aim to understand the behavior of these protective structures in...

This research uses physical and numerical experiments to investigate the wave overtopping of a vertical seawall in an uneven surf zone. The numerical experiments exploit two approaches, which differ in vertical resolution and computational time: CFD-RANS and SWASH. The tests were conducted with and without the wall, allowing the analysis of the spe...

Onshore wind can significantly affect wave overtopping process and increase mean overtopping discharge. Thus, the wind should be an important variable in coastal design process. However, despite many researches have analyzed the influence of wind on the overtopping, there is still a lack of exhaustive knowledge about this phenomenon. To further ana...

Onshore wind significantly affects wave run-up and overtopping, thereby representing a major variable to account for in the design process. The aim of this study is to analyze the ability of numerical models to properly reproduce the wind effect on the overtopping at vertical seawall and to use them to understand how the wind influences the overtop...

The orbital velocity of sea wave particles affects the value of sea surface parameters as measured by radar Doppler altimeters (also known as delay Doppler altimeter (DDA)). In DDA systems, the along-track resolution is attained by algorithms that take into account the Doppler shift induced by the component along the Earth/antenna direction of the...

Calculating the significant wave height (SWH) in a given location as a function of the return time is an essential tool of coastal and ocean engineering; such a calculation can be carried out by making use of the now widely available weather and wave model chains, which often lead to underestimating the results, or by means of in situ experimental...

Random wave CFD experiments have been carried out to study the loading process on a sloping top caisson breakwater subject to significant overtopping. Numerical results suggest that since wave force under crest is reduced by the overpassing, wave pressures under trough become comparatively larger, leading the structure to fail seaward even in absen...

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was employed to simulate the interaction between sea waves and a specific type of vertical breakwater, namely sloping-top breakwater. Forces on the outer and inner face of the structure are separately analyzed and detailed descriptions of both types of wave loadings acting on the structure are given. Particu...

One of the most interesting characteristics of the Wave Energy Converters (WEC) based on the overtopping principle is their capability of being integrated into conventional harbor structures. However, in these cases particular attention must be drawn to the structural stability and the nature of loadings exerted on the device. This paper presents C...

This paper reports on an investigation on the influence of waves on the sea surface height error, σh, as measured by Delay Doppler satellite altimetry (DDA). CryoSat-2 altimeter sea surface height (SSH) data in the North Sea, processed in both DDA and pseudo low resolution mode (PLRM), are correlated with European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Fo...

Estimating the extreme values of significant wave height (HS), generally described by the HS return period TR function HS(TR) and by its confidence intervals, is a necessity in many branches of coastal science and engineering. The availability of indirect wave data generated by global and regional wind and wave model chains have brought radical cha...

This paper describes a set of experiments undertaken at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in the large wave flume of the Maritime Engineering Laboratory. The purpose of this study is to highlight the effects of wave grouping and long-wave short-wave combinations regimes on low frequency generations. An eigen-value decomposition has been performe...

The paper provides some developments of a numerical approach (“Numerical Calculation of Flow Within Armour Units”, FWAU) to the design of rubble mound breakwaters. The hydrodynamics of wave induced flow within the interstices of concrete blocks is simulated by making use of advanced, but well tested, CFD techniques to integrate RANS equations. Whil...

The paper deals with the validation of a wave by wave approach for the calculation of the wave loadings exerted on an overtopping type Wave Energy Converter named Seawave Slot-Cone Generator (SSG). The prediction method, originally developed for regular waves, employs the Iribarren number (Battjes, 1974), the slope parameter (Svendsen, 2006) and th...

With the aim of redesigning the geometry of the Malecòn, a vertical face seawall protecting the northern waterfront of the city of La Habana, a wide experimental campaign was carried out. The latter was performed in the frame of a collaboration between the Government of the isle of Cuba and the CUGRI consortium, an Italian institution which joins...

The paper discusses preliminary results of a CFD study on the structural response of a Sloping Top Breakwater subject to wave overtopping. The analysis showed that the transmitted wave field act to increase both the landward and the seaward forces and that the conventional design methods may be not adequate to guarantee an appropriate degree of saf...

It has been shown before, and it is intuitively evident, that in a Significant Wave Height (SWH) time series, the longer the sampling interval, the lower is the number of events which are above a given threshold value. As a consequence, the use of data with a low time resolution (such as a 3 h sampling, for instance) causes a considerable undervalu...

The paper discusses preliminary results of a CFD study on the structural response of a Sloping Top Breakwater subject to wave overtopping. The analysis showed that the transmitted wave field act to increase both the landward and the seaward forces and that the conventional design methods may be not adequate to guarantee an appropriate degree of saf...

The reliability of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in reproducing qualitative and quantitative features of loadings exerted by waves on Seawave Slot-cone Generators (SSG) has been investigated via 17 numerical experiments, conducted with the suite Flow 3D. The geometry of the Wave Energy Converter (WEC), as well as the characteristics of the for...

The paper presents the results of an integrated buoy and X-Band radar sea state monitoring activity carried out on the southern coast of Sicily. The work involved the integration of buoy and radar data, as well as the simultaneous acquisition of Significant Wave Height (SWH) values from two similar radar sets located at a slight distance from each...

G. Ludeno, F. Reale, F. Dentale, E. Pugliese Carratelli, A. Natale, F. Serafino “Estimating Nearshore Bathymetry from X-Band Radar Data” ( Book Chapter) 2015 Coastal Ocean Observing Systems, Elsevier edited b Y. Liu, ‎H. Kerkering, ‎R.H. Weisberg DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-802022-7.00015-8 In the last few years, a number of land- and ship-based X-ba...

La correttezza della progettazione delle opere costiere ed off-shore dipende in maniera essenziale dall᾽affidabilità delle metodologie di valutazione del clima ondoso; e poiché le esigenze legate allo sviluppo della tecnica ed alla protezione dell᾽ambiente sono in continua crescita, egualmente deve crescere la qualità ed il numero di dati disponibi...

The Seawave Slot-cone Generator (SSG) is a wave energy converter based on the overtopping principle which has attracted a good deal of funds from both public and private investors in the last years. Yet, no reliable design method exists to predict the magnitude of forces exerted by the waves on its front face. Only recently a set of formulae have b...

This paper discusses preliminary results of a wide experimental campaign carried out in the frame of a collaboration between the Government of the isle of Cuba and the CUGRI consortium, an Italian institution which joins the Universities of Salerno and Napoli Federico II. The tests were aimed to analyze the performances of different solutions desig...

Marine X-band radar based systems are well tested to provide information about sea state and bathymetry. It is also well known that complex geometries and non-uniform bathymetries provide a much bigger challenge than offshore scenarios. In order to tackle this issue a retrieval method is proposed, based on spatial partitioning of the data and the a...

The paper provides some results of a new procedure, developed by MEDUS, to analyze the hydrodynamic aspects of the interactions between maritime emerged breakwaters and waves, by integrating CAD and CFD software.The filtration of the fluid within the interstices of a concrete blocks breakwater is evaluated by integrating the Reynolds Averaged Navie...

The paper provides some results of a new procedure to analyze the hydrodynamic aspects of the interactions between maritime emerged breakwaters and waves by integrating CAD and CFD. The structure is modeled in the numerical domain by overlapping individual three-dimensional elements (Tetrapods), very much like the real world or physical laboratory...

This paper provides some results of a new procedure to analyze the hydrodynamic aspects of the interactions between maritime emerged breakwaters and waves by integrating computer-aided design and computational fluid dynamicsCFD. The structure is modeled in the numerical domain by overlapping individual three-dimensional elements (Xbloc (R)), very m...

The determination of wave height by active satellite remote sensing, be it Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) or altimeter, has been a common practice for many years and is now imbedded on many meteorological and oceanographic forecasting systems. Despite their differences, all active sensors are based on the measurement of the Normalized Radar Cross S...

We investigate on the strength and ductility properties of recycled PET fiber-reinforced concretes (RPETFRCs) showing different mix-designs and PET filaments with variable mechanical and geometric properties. Available literature results of compression tests and four-point bending tests on such materials are reviewed comparing laboratory results in...

Estimating extreme values of significant wave heights (SWH) is a necessity in many branches of coastal science and engineering. Storm intensity, however, is not a smooth varying quantity, but it oscillates with random variations around a generally regular trend; the estimated value of extreme sea states is, therefore, necessarily affected by the sa...

Until recently, physical models were the only way to investigate into the details of breakwaters behavior under wave attack. From the numerical point of view, the complexity of the fluid dynamic processes involved has so far hindered the direct application of Navier-Stokes equations within the armour blocks, due to the complex geometry and the pres...

Wave Run Up and Reflection on Tridimensional Virtual Breakwater The paper provides some results of a new procedure (CAD and CFD) to analyze the hydrodynamic aspects of the interactions between virtual maritime emerged breakwaters and regular waves. The structure is modeled into numerical domain, very much like the real world or the physical laborat...

The paper is a summary of a multidisciplinary research activities developed at the Civil Engineering Department, University of Salerno, to support the hydraulic and structural efficiency tests of mari-time breakwaters, emerged or submerged. Following an innovative approach, by digital photogrammetry, remote sensing and the CAD/CAM techniques, was d...

The objective of this work is to provide an indication of the effects of waveinduced movement of oil on the sea surface in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. By making use of modeled wave fields, satellite altimeter, and buoy data, mean trajectories and wave-induced oil spreading are computed for some of the storm events which took pl...

In recent years, the interest in developing new technologies to produce energy with low environmental impact by using renewable sources has grown exponentially all over the world. In this context, the experiences made to derive electricity from the sea (currents, waves, etc.) are of particular interest. At the moment, due to the many existing exper...

The paper provides some results of a new procedure, developed to analyze the hydrodynamic aspects of the interactions between maritime emerged breakwaters and waves, by integrating CAD and CFD software. The filtration of the fluid within the interstices of a concrete blocks breakwater, is evaluated by integrating the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes...

Such is the complexity of wave-structure interaction phenomena that most available theories and procedures for the design of maritime structures – both vertical and rubble mound breakwaters - are still derived by fitting simple conceptual models to the results of physical experiments, either in the field or in the laboratories. Recent developments...

This work provides a new application of numerical pseudo-random simulation of satellite active sensor imagery ([1] and [2]), which allows a greater freedom to introduce complex hydrodynamic mechanisms compared to the traditional spectral analytical procedure. After previous works [3] and [4] on the basic methodology, which mainly concentrated on ti...

Some results of a wind and wave monitoring activity carried out for more than twenty years in the costal waters of the Regione Campania, by two scientific institutions are given and a discussion is provided. A clear understanding of coastal processes can only be gained if all available data are systematically integrated with up-to-date wave modelli...

The limited wavelength and the rapidly changing conditions due to short fetches and complex coastal shapes in enclosed seas pose a big challenge to the applications of satellite SAR data. In order improve the understanding of some aspects of image formation in such conditions, the authors are pursuing a long term work mainly based on numerical impl...

Wind and wave data from SAR imagery over the oceans have been routinely employed for many years, and the techniques to extract such data are a well established field of research. The paper presents a different method, based the well established two wavelength models, whereby the surface slope is simulated by numerically generating the instantaneous...

Beach replenishment in the presence of a submerged barrier has become a popular strategy in some countries, both as a coastal protection system and as a means to protect or increase recreational beach activities. Whether the submerged barrier is meant as a proper breakwater system which reduces the wave energy or only as a way to retain the fill, i...

The interest of cross-shore sediment transport on beaches has been greatly increased over the last decade, due to the acknowledgement of its importance in understanding and forecasting beach behaviour as well as to the advancement of modelling techniques in wave hydrodynamics [1,8]. Of course a modelling technique for sediment trasport is only as g...

While Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite wave data are routinely applied over the oceans to extract spectral shapes, their application over enclosed seas is limited by their low resolution. No spectral information can presently be gathered about wavelengths of less than about 100 meters, thus limiting their usefulness to a restricted number o...

In the present article a new procedure is proposed to study the interactions between maritime breakwaters (submerged or emerged) and the waves, by integrating CAD and CFD software. The approach is meant to match closely the physical laboratory test procedure, and it is oriented at analyzing the hydrodynamic aspects of the phenomenon (overtopping, b...