In parallel with technological development, the reliable characterization of wave climate and of the associated energy resource is crucial to the design of efficient Wave Energy Converters and to an effective site-technology matching, especially in low-energy seas. Although wave energy is still less developed than other marine renewables, its high density, great potential and minimal environmental impact have renewed the interest of developers, investors and governments globally, also in view of the increasing awareness of climate change and of the necessity to reduce carbon emissions.
Ocean Energy is now emerging as a viable long-term form of renewable energy, which might contribute around 10% of EU power demand by 2050, if sufficient support is guaranteed along its road to full commercialization, allowing to further demonstrate the reliability, robustness and overall economic competitiveness of technologies. Besides its cost-effectiveness and low environmental impact, the combination of WECs with other technologies and across different economic sectors would also allow to reduce anthropic pressures on a heavily exploited marine space, for example, through the implementation of multifunctional offshore farms (Wan et al., 2016 Leira, 2017 Foteinis, 2022) that harmonize the needs of the tourism industry and of maritime transport, the exploitation of fisheries and aquaculture (Menicou and Vassiliou, 2010), and the emerging opportunities offered by marine renewables. Here, marine energy solutions can in fact prove effective to both generate utility scale grid electricity and increase the value of climate-adaptive infrastructures, such as breakwaters, where WECs can be incorporated with the advantage of combining a limited increase in construction costs with ease of maintenance and coastal protection Vicinanza et al., 2019). The accentuated vulnerability of the Mediterranean environment indeed demands that the effort be undertaken to pursue the transition towards higher shares of renewable energy, by implementing multi-purpose solutions that simultaneously address greenhouse-gas-emission reduction and climate adaptation. This paper presents a review of innovative harbor breakwaters for wave-energy conversion, developing a coconstructed description of the criticality and benefits of such innovation.
In this context, the combination wave energy converters–harbor breakwaters represent the coastal engineering response to these issues, creating a smart alternative and a path of innovation.
Moreover, the international community recognizes the importance of investing in reliable and reasonable energy sources, which are alternative to the traditional ones. Level rise and the intensification of extreme events related to climate change issues are requiring new replacement schemes and, in most cases, will not be easy to achieve with a simple modification in seawall height. This paper gives a comprehensive review on the analytical and numerical applications of potential flow models on porous/perforated breakwaters, including the theories of porosity models, novel developments and applications of various analytical and numerical approaches.In a time span of over 3,000 years, the function of harbor breakwaters has remained the same (i.e., the energy dissipation), with differencesÄepending on the general breakwater configurations: rubble mound breakwaters or caisson breakwaters. Despite the long history of application, the potential flow models continue to witness recent developments and improvements that aim to increase the efficiency and accuracy of the modelling. Consequently, they are a popular choice in the study of porous/perforated breakwaters until today. Although the conditions of non-viscous, incompressible fluid and irrotational flow are assumed, the potential flow models can assist in understanding major mechanisms that determine the performance of porous/perforated breakwaters and provide satisfactory estimates on important hydrodynamic parameters. Among the non-physical modelling approaches, analytical and numerical methods based on potential flow theory are often used as they are more efficient than those allowing for flow viscosity. Before a new porous or perforated breakwater concept enters into the stage of physical model testing, careful parametric studies and mechanism studies need to be carried out to examine its feasibility and to ensure the success of the model test. Analytical approaches and numerical tools play a significant role in the research and design of porous and perforated breakwaters.