Engineering modeling of wave transmission of reef balls

Reef Balls are hemispherical concrete units, which feature hydrogen ion concentration neutralized concrete and specialized surface textures to promote the growth of marine life. Reef Balls can be arranged in different layouts to form submerged breakwaters, even of significantwidth. Although structures formed with Reef Balls have been used for the protection of several top-quality sites, no well-established design toolexists for the prediction of wave transmission behind them. In this study, a set of equations were proposed based on the conceptual approach. The expressions were validated by more than 300 experimental data from physical model tests conducted at two different laboratories. The new predictivemodel showed a number of encouraging properties, such as a high determination index, R2, normality of the residuals, and a constant standard error with respect to the structure layout.