Resumen
Fishermen frequently suffer accidents and may even drown when they are swept into the sea by coastal freak waves near the shore of northeastern Taiwan. To accurately predict the deformation of free surfaces when waves violently strike coastal structures, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model with a nonlinear and mesh-free numerical approach was adopted in this study. Eight cases based on an actual coastal freak wave accident were simulated. The results show that the maximum splash height of the coastal freak wave in the breakwater was dependent not only on the incident wave but also on the existence of armor blocks. The armor block installation reduces the overflow discharge but enhances the horizontal throw speed of the coastal freak wave by more than five times.