Publications

Neste trabalho apresenta-se o projeto BSafe4Sea - Controlo da Segurança de Quebra-mares através da Análise de um Sistema de Previsão e Apoio à Decisão, que tem como objetivos o desenvolvimento, a aplicação e o teste de metodologias de previsão do comportamento estrutural de quebra-mares de talude. Estas metodologias formarão a base de um sistema inovador de apoio à decisão para o planeamento e priorização de trabalhos de manutenção e reparação, aumentando, assim, a segurança, funcionalidade e resiliência destes quebra-mares. Apresentam-se as atividades do projeto

O projeto To-SEAlert tem como objetivo a inclusão de um conjunto de ferramentas/metodologias de modo a tornar o sistema HIDRALERTA (Poseiro, 2019, Fortes et al., 2020, Pinheiro et al., 2020) mais eficiente, fiável e robusto. Essas ferramentas incluem o uso de imagens de satélite e de vídeo, de modelação numérica e física, métodos quantitativos e probabilísticos para a avaliação do risco e planeamento de emergência, para melhorar a eficiência e a confiança no sistema, bem como proporcionar a sua validação. Este projeto tem como objetivo principal a implementação de um sistema que seja capaz de apoiar as autoridades responsáveis na monitorização, prevenção e gestão de situações de emergência. Este artigo apresenta o trabalho desenvolvido recentemente nas diferentes tarefas do projeto, entre o qual se pode destacar o desenvolvimento do protótipo do sistema para a zona costeira da Costa da Caparica, a validação do protótipo do porto da Ericeira com recurso a imagens de vídeo-monitorização, o teste de modelos numéricos para o cálculo do galgamento, e a implementação de metodologias de avaliação quantitativa das consequências do risco.

O SAFEPORT-SINES é um sistema de previsão e alerta para a segurança da navegação em zonas portuárias, englobando situações de emergência associadas a navios em trânsito ou amarrados, devidas a condições meteo-oceanográficas extremas. O sistema fornece previsões com 3 dias de antecedência da agitação marítima, das condições de vento e de maré, assim como dos movimentos dos navios, identificando as situações que possam ter consequências gravosas nos navios em manobra ou amarrados dentro do porto. Os níveis de risco associados baseiam-se em critérios de segurança e de operacionalidade, nomeadamente nos movimentos do navio e nos esforços nos elementos de amarração. Neste trabalho apresenta-se o sistema SAFEPORT em termos do seu desenvolvimento e arquitetura, do fluxo e tratamento de dados e do funcionamento dos modelos numéricos utilizados. Apresenta-se ainda o funcionamento da plataforma web e da aplicação móvel onde é possível consultar os parâmetros relevantes para aferir os riscos referidos

SAFEPORT safety system aims at forecasting and alerting, on a regular basis, emergency situations regarding ships operation in port areas caused by extreme weather-oceanographic conditions. It uses forecasts provided offshore of the area under study of sea agitation, wind and tide. The characterization of the response of the free and moored ships at a berth is performed using the numerical package SWAMS. The system issue alerts, through danger levels associated with risk levels of exceedance of recommended values for movements and forces imposed on ship mooring systems. SAFEPORT can be adapted to any port. So far, it has been developed and adapted to three terminals of the port of Sines, where three different ships were simulated. This paper presents the developments made to date of the safety system, which includes tests performed in storm situations. The numerical models run every day, in real-time mode, in a computer cluster and the system provide forecast results for the next 72 hours. The results are disseminated on a web page and a mobile application in a variety of formats. It was concluded that the SAFEPORT safety system issued alerts according to the observed reality during the storm Dora. It has also been shown to be a computer tool for the optimization of ship mooring systems. The system is currently in testing and validation phase therefore, forecasts should be interpreted as indicative.

Docking of very large ships is a delicate procedure as the kinetic energy associated with large masses of the ship can result in high impact forces causing damages to the ship, the fenders and even the quay itself. The expected berthing loads are a key element in quay design. Fenders are usually rubbery flexible elements that turn the vessel

Docking of very large ships is a delicate procedure as the kinetic energy associated with large masses of the ship can result in high impact forces causing damages to the ship, the fenders and even the quay itself. The expected berthing loads are a key element in quay design. Fenders are usually rubbery flexible elements that turn the vessel

The To-SEAlert project (Fortes et al., 2021) aims to include a set of tools/methodologies into the Early Warning System HIDRALERTA (Poseiro, 2019, Fortes et al., 2020, Pinheiro et al., 2020) to make it more efficient, reliable and robust.

Marine fenders provide the necessary interface between berthing ships and berth structures (PIANC, 2002). Their absence can cause damage to either the quay or the ship or both the quay and the ship, endangering lives, and property. Due to the complex hydrodynamics around berthing ships, the characterization of the maximum force applied to an individual fender and the force distribution among a set of fenders is an essential factor in the design and safety of maritime structures and the fenders themselves, as well as for improving existing ones. This paper aims to describe a combining physical and numerical modelling of a ship impact on fenders, in order to improve the numerical modelling of this problem.Physical modelling represents a good practice in hydraulic studies, where a scale model is used to reproduce complex dynamic phenomena. However, the use of a sophisticated numerical model (or a package of numerical models) can provide a good means to evaluate the samecomplex physical processes and, in addition, to design and test a large number of alternatives in a short time span.Both types of models have their strengths and weaknesses (Gerritsen and Sutherland, 2011). Physical models provide a natural reproduction of complex non-linear physical phenomena, therefore they are well established and considered to be truthful. On the other hand, these models can be expensive and time consuming. In addition, one has to deal with the scale effect and measurement difficulties and errors are frequent. Numerical models in turn are very efficient to simulate rapidly many physical processes and the results can be easily extracted. On the other hand, to improve the reliability of their use in practice, it is necessary to calibrate several parameters through physical model measurements and field experiments. In order to take advantage of the potentiality of the two models emerged the composite modelling which is the integrated and balanced use of physical and numerical models (Gerritsen and Sutherland, 2011). This technique also costs but provides results with a better quality than those model techniques separately and increases the confidence in the use of numerical models.The physical modeling consists of a ship scaled model, whose impact on the fenders was performed in a wave basin. Various impact velocities and angles between the ship axis and the fenders alignment were used to represent possible collision conditions. The same conditions were reproduced by a numerical package. The numerical modeling was performed using MOORNAV (Santos, 1994), which estimates the ship motions and the forces exerted on the elements of the mooring system, namely mooring lines and fenders.

Esta comunicação diz respeito à fase de testes do sistema SAFEPORT, tendo-se avaliado o seu desempenho numa situação de tempestade. Trata-se de um sistema desenvolvido para a segurança da navegação do porto de Sines, e, mais concretamente, nos seus terminais de Granéis Líquidos, Multiusos e Contentores. Para estes terminais, simulou-se o impacto da tempestade Célia nos esforços nos cabos de amarração de um navio petroleiro, de um navio de carga geral e de um navio porta contentores, respetivamente. O sistema SAFEPORT demonstrou ser capaz de antecipar os efeitos nos navios amarrados dos estados de agitação associados à tempestade Célia.

The present project addresses a problem related to the erosion effects on a breakwater barrier due to waves which leads to its degradation and that may eventually lead to lack of functionality of the structure. In the present case, the breakwater acts as a physical barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and the cargo Harbour of Leixões, in Matosinhos, Portugal, justifying the needs of health monitoring of the barrier.To monitor this structure, with a length of roughly 700 m, the need of a fast data acquisition system led to the choice of imaging techniques which allow for a fast acquisition of a diversified data set. The images were acquired using a high-resolution camera attached to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), enabling a faster and more automated procedure that leads to the systematization of the process, while being compatible with the difficult accessibility of the structure, which is surrounded by sea waves. Point clouds corresponding to the breakwater

Nowadays, renewable energy is a topic widely discussed in scientific community. Specifically wave energy attracts attention because it has a high energy potential distributed throughout the planet. Oscillating Water Column (OWC) wave energy converter is one of the most studied devices that have promising perspectives to be installed commercially. This study aims investigating the influence of chamber sizes and turbine characteristics dimensions of an OWC device located at the southern Brazilian coast is carried out. Numerical simulations for incident waves with period T = 7 s and 10 s and height H = 1.5 m, by using the FLUENT® model, based on the finite volume method (VFM) are carried out. Efficiencies for different chamber sizes and Wells turbine characteristic relations (kt) in each incident wave are determined. The highest efficiencies were obtained by a chamber with 5 x 5 m and kt = 530 Pa.s/m³ in the case of an incident wave with T = 7s (52%), and 30 x 30 m and kt = 15 Pa.s/m³ at T = 10s (65%).

Port terminals downtimes lead to large economic losses and largely affect the port

This paper describes the physical model, experimental setup and tests performed to study the motions and forces of a ship moored to the pier A at the Leixões oil terminal, following the breakwater

HIDRALERTA is a forecast, early warning and risk assessment system for port and coastal areas that uses measurements and estimates of sea-waves and water levels to evaluate overtopping/flooding events. The calculation of the mean overtopping discharge over a maritime structure is performed through artificial neural network-based tools and/or empirical formulae. The system is developed in open source software, mainly using the Python language. This paper presents the application of HIDRALERTA system to reproduce the hurricane Lorenzo conditions and impacts at Lajes das Flores port on October 2nd 2019, the most affected port in Azores. This hurricane was regarded as the strongest storm to hit Azores in 20 years. The system predicted the expected results for the hurricane wave characteristics, as well as overtopping discharge volumes. Further validation still need to be improved with the collaboration of the local authorities and the use of historical data.

Numerical models are useful tools to predict the effects of storms in coastal areas. The objective of this work was to simulate the effects of storms in São Pedro de Moel beach by using XBeach. The nearshore sea state was obtained by propagating offshore conditions using the SWAN model. The XBeach model was divided into two setups to analyse overtopping events and coastal evolution. Sensibility tests, calibration, and validation, using information from different storms, were performed for the different setups. The results from the overtopping simulation were compared against results from an empirical formula. The comparison showed lower values obtained with the empirical formula. The coastal evolution run point out to the necessity of having better field data before and after storms to improve the model setting and accuracy.

The assessment of damage evolution in scale model tests of rubble-mound breakwaters can be achieved by comparing eroded depths and volumes between consecutive surveys. This paper focuses on damage evolution of a model of a rubble-mound breakwater and on the novelty of the non-intrusive survey methodologies such as laser scanning and Time of Flight (ToF) techniques, based on point clouds, enabling the extraction of profiles and the calculation of eroded depths and eroded volumes. The final objective of this work is to evaluate the applicability of the estimation the number of displaced armour units, using a non-dimensional damage parameter based on the calculated eroded volume.The paper will also describe the experiments conducted under the RODBreak, a project sponsored by the HYDRALAB+ Transnational Access Program, in which a stretch of a rubble-mound breakwater was built at the wave-current basin of the Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) to assess the structure behavior. Four scan surveys were conducted using a Faro Focus 3D laser scan, as well as a ToF sensor. Those surveys were carried out before and after two test series, in order to evaluate the eroded volume and profile evolution.

Neste trabalho é efetuada a validação do protótipo To-SEAlert para o porto da Ericeira. Para a validação dos resultados do modelo SWAN foram utilizados os dados de duas boias situadas ao largo da Nazaré e para a validação das previsões do sistema de cálculo do grau de risco foram simuladas as depressões Elsa e Fabien (ocorridas em dezembro de 2019) e que foram responsáveis por fortes danos na cabeça do molhe do porto da Ericeira. Verificou-se uma boa concordância entre os dados das boias e os resultados do modelo SWAN, tendo no entanto o modelo reproduzido melhor a direção média e a altura significativa do que o período de pico. Relativamente aos valores de galgamento, os resultados obtidos na simulação das depressões Elsa e Fabien estiveram em concordância com os valores referidos na literatura como causadores de danos nas estruturas.

This work aims to determine the exploitable wave energy resource at six potential sites, located in the Azores, Madeira and Sines breakwater city harbours. For that purpose, the thirdgeneration wave model SWAN is used to estimate the sea-wave conditions over the last 40 years. Boundary conditions of the sea states and wind fields are provided by the climate reanalysis datasets (ERA5). Using those results as inputs to the SWAN model, the sea-states were propagated shoreward, in order to estimate and analyse the wave climate conditions in the regions of interest. By combining the average energy flux per unit-length of wave front and the probability of occurrence of each sea state, the average exploitable annual energy per unit length of wave crest can be computed. The variability of this energy flux is described, since it is of fundamental importance for the efficiency of the Wave Energy Converters (WEC).

Former investigations on wave run-up and overtopping of (impermeable and permeable) coastal structures aimed at quantifying the influence of oblique waves on mean overtopping discharge, water layer thickness and velocities by developing empirical formulas of a reduction factor for wave obliquity,

In 2017, the RODBreak experiment was conducted. The experiment aimed at characterizing wave run-up, overtopping and damage in rubble-mound breakwaters. The reason for these experiments was the huge impact that climate can have on maritime structures, particularly in rubble mound breakwaters. In fact, the forecast sea level rise associated with more frequent and severe storms will have consequences either on the increase of wave runup, wave overtopping or on damage on existent structures since they were not design for those extreme values. However, for those climate change scenarios, little is known about the actual failure probability of such structures.Within this framework, a stretch of a rubble-mound breakwater was built in a wave basin. Under extreme wave conditions, with different incident wave angles (from 40° to 90°), a total of 49 tests were performed. Each test had different testing parameters, such as significant wave height (Hs), peak period (Tp) and wave direction. Also, for each test, different types of measurements were considered. Incident sea waves were measured with 3 arrays of 6 acoustic wave probes each as well as with isolated acoustic wave probes and 5 Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (ADV

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