Photo: COWI

Breakwaters 

COWI is an international name in the design of breakwaters. Our experience reaches from fundamental scientific research to design and supervision of construction.

Optimised solutions

COWI's staff has more than 25 years experience from over 100 international breakwater projects in 5 continents.  

The experience includes all types of breakwater from rubble mound to caisson. In addition the experience includes an extensive variety of armour units such as quarry rock, cubes, grooved cubes, dolos, tetrapods, accropodes, and CORE-LOC.  

Breakwater design

COWI uses its in-house capabilities in numerical modelling of wave propagation as basis for designing the configuration of breakwaters, and to perform conceptual analysis and design.  

We specify and supervise 2D flume tests and 3D physical model tests.  

In the event of poor ground conditions, state of the art soil structure interaction analysis software is used to analyse the breakwater foundation and define soil improvement works as necessary.

Photo: COWI

Cost effective solutions

COWI's knowledge of breakwater construction techniques enables cost effective solutions to be developed.   In many instances COWI acts as specialist advisor for projects that have experienced difficulties in order to develop cost effective, constructible repair solutions.