Hydrostatic Response of Deployable Hyperbolic-Paraboloid Umbrellas as Coastal Armor

Abstract

This paper introduces an innovative structural system consisting of four-sided hyperbolic-paraboloid (hypar) roof umbrellas as hard countermeasures against nearshore hazards. The umbrellas line the coast and remain upright during normal operation, providing shade and shelter along the waterfront while not limiting access to the shore. A hinge at the hypar-column interface permits tilting to form a physical barrier against surge-induced coastal inundation. Analytical equations based on idealized boundary conditions are formulated in the hydrostatic regime. The equations provide insight into optimal geometric parameters and are used to validate a decoupled numerical scheme constituting smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the finite element method (FEM). All numerical reactions concur with the analytical solutions for water inundation matching the total deployed height. A proof-of-concept study was employed to successfully illustrate the applicability of deployable hypar umbrellas as coastal armor from a structural engineering perspective. This work ultimately demonstrates the feasibility of decoupled SPH-FEM methods in modeling fluid-structure interaction involving hypar forms, while establishing a foundation for their analysis and design for coastal hazard adaptation.