Advanced Breakwater and Causeway Design Concepts

We propose to develop an advanced breakwater and causeway system for operation in austere ports, with limited or no facilities, that will provide a complete solution to reliably enable the military to supply forces ashore with needed cargo and supplies. A ruggedly-designed breakwater made from high-strength fabrics can yield an area of reduced sea state conditions in which cargo transfer operations can be effective. A lightweight causeway, easily installed within close proximity to shore, will allow the cargo to be transported from the vessel to the shore. This effort will leverage previous experience with multi-body seakeeping analysis tools, nonlinear mechanical system simulation tools, and ongoing efforts involving technologies directly related to breakwater and causeway systems. Characteristic components of the breakwater and causeway will be analyzed to show the feasibility of approach in modeling the entire system; a process for analyzing mooring loads will be assessed and a simple example of a vessel moored to a floating, anchored structure will be performed; initial design details of the breakwater and causeway will be developed, as well as mooring techniques and system installation and removal concepts.