Extreme wave-induced hazards pose significant risks to coastal infrastructure and public safety, with pedestrian accidents being particularly prevalent. Grounded in an actual pedestrian overboard incident, this research quantifies the wave-impact hydrodynamics on a human body at a compound-slope dike berm through novel physical model experiments. This work is complemented by numerical simulations based on OpenFOAM, which utilized the VPM-UMTHINC (volume-average/point-value method-UMTHINC method with quadratic surface representation and Gaussian quadrature) interface-capturing scheme. While systematically examining the effects of conventional hydrodynamic parameters such as water depths and wave heights, this study places a primary focus on pedestrian posture and orientation. Our findings reveal the dominant role of these factors in determining the forces on the human body and elucidate their underlying influence mechanisms. Additionally, our findings have established a quantitative relationship between the human body's reflux force and impact force, and provided corresponding empirical formulas. Our findings indicate that the body's projected area facing the wave is the primary reason for force variations among different postures. Specifically, the wave impact on a seated posture was roughly double that on a standing one. A standing posture at a 90° orientation to the wave direction minimized the resultant forces. Crucially, a comparative analysis showed that while the survival posture is more stable under low wave heights, it becomes significantly less stable than a standard standing posture under severe wave conditions.
Hou et al. (2026) studied this question.