Wave loading

Wave loading is most commonly the application of a pulsed or wavelike stress to a material or object. This is most commonly used in the analysis of piping, ships, or building structures which experience wind, water, or seismic disturbances.

Examples of wave loading

• Walking on the beach: As one walks through the waves on the beach, as the wave recedes, one feels the sand becomes soft and mushy beneath one's feet, and one sinks in.
• Formation of beaches: Under each wave crest, the sand becomes saturated with water. As each wave trough approaches, the pressure on the sand is reduced, so that water rises from the sand, carrying sand up into the water. Because the water is moving toward the beach at that time, the sand is carried toward the beach by the wave. As the wave recedes from the beach, there is no comparable plumbing action. As a result, there is a net movement of sand up the beach. (Experiment by Douglas Inman and Daniel Conly of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA, as reported in Discover, November 1992, p. 14.)
• Offshore storms and pipes: As large waves pass over buried pipes, water pressure increases above it. As the trough approaches, pressure over the pipe drops dramatically and this sudden and repeated variation in pressure can break pipes (John T. Christian et al., “Large Diameter Underwater Pipeline for Nuclear Power Plant Designed Against Soil Liquefaction,” Offshore Technology Conference Preprints, Vol. 2, Houston, Texas, 6–8 May 1974, pp. 597–606.)
• Engineering oil platforms: The effects of wave-loading are a serious issue for engineers designing oil platforms, which must contend with the effects of wave loading, and have devised a number of algorithms to do so.