Experimental Investigation of Irregular Wave Uplift Force on Deck of Exposed High-Pile Jetties

A laboratory setup was developed to investigate irregular wave uplift loads on exposed high-pile jetties. It is shown that the dimensionless uplift load increases to the maximum with an increasing relative clearance and then decreases. The relative clearance corresponding to the peak force is linked to a range from 0.4 to 0.8. When the relative clearance exceeds a certain value, the wave can not reach the underside of the deck and the force becomes zero. Distinct trends of dimensionless force with a relative width of deck show that the force tends to decrease as the relative deck width increases, and then the decrease slows down after the relative deck width increases or decreases to a certain value. The pressure distribution length associated with the maximum uplift force is equivalent to the wave contact width x. When x is larger than the width of deck B, it is taken as B. The statistical distribution of loads obeys the Weibull distribution. The results from the analyses of the real data suggest a new dimensionless prediction model on wave-in-deck uplift loads and the conversion ratio between wave loads at different exceedance probabilities. A comparison is made between the new prediction model and the existing widely used three prediction models. These results are used as useful references for structural design of the jetty.