Abstract:
Rubble-mound structures are commonly used for coastal and port protection and needs a
properly design as well as inspection and maintenance during its lifetime. The design of such breakwaters
usually requires a physical scale model to be tested under different irregular incident wave and tide
conditions in order to evaluate its hydraulic and structural behaviour, namely the stability of the proposed
design. Armour units displacement and fall analysis in physical models are then a key point in the design
verification and usually requires a trained technician. In this work, an algorithm made in Matlab® is
presented, consisting in digital images processing and analysis which allows automatic and precise
displacement detection as well as its location in time and space. For a selected displacement, it is also
possible to characterize it.
