Accretion and erosion of a beach behind a detached breakwater

A small experimental breakwater was built in front of the beach of Reggio Calabria and the effects of this construction on the shoreline were observed, along with the incident waves. The experiment led to full confirmation of the recent Hsu and Silvester model (1990) for the prediction of accretion and erosion behind a detached breakwater. Moreover, the experiment provided new informations regarding the range of validy of the aforesaid model. In fact, the authors proposed the model without any limitation regarding the validity. It is clear that it must be valid for the ratio barrier length and wave length greater than a certain lower limit. This was 1.4 during the experiment carried out in the sea of Reggio Calabria in May 1994. Lastly, the experiment confirmed the validity of the natural laboratory of Reggio Calabria, not only for research on offshore engineering but also for research on coastal engineering.