Ramón Iribarren Cavanilles Ing.D (15 April 1900 – 21 February 1967) was a Spanish civil engineer and professor of ports at the School of Civil Engineering (, ETSICCP) in Madrid. He was chairman of the Spanish delegation to the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congresses (PIANC) and was elected as an academic at the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, although he did not take up the latter position. He made notable contributions in the field of coastal engineering, including methods for the calculation of breakwater stability and research which led to the development of the Iribarren number.
He undertook detailed research at several ports in the Bay of Biscay which were subject to extreme waves and frequent storms, and this underpinned much of his early research work. Iribarren recognised that many of the ports in the Bay of Biscay were insufficiently protected from severe wave and storm conditions, which had resulted in a number of shipwrecks and threatened the economic viability of the local fishing community, with whom he enjoyed a close relationship.
In the 1930s, much port and harbour infrastructure design in Spain relied on simply replicating methods used on previous projects, with the guiding principles for the design of new harbour and coastal projects often relying solely on a simple analysis of whether previous construction methods had been successful or not. Iribarren was dissatisfied with such a wholly empirical approach, which he considered did not take into account the effects of location-specific issues such as wave and sediment behaviour, and having identified this as a problem, he spent a number of years developing scientific and mathematical approaches which could be applied to specific cases, based on extensive research and an understanding of wave behaviour and coastal dynamics, in which he made extensive use of observation and photography.
He was instrumental in the development of a research facility for coastal engineering, the first of its kind in Spain. His work achieved international prominence and remains highly relevant, being subject to ongoing development and underpinning several contemporary design methods used in coastal engineering and coastal protection works.
Life and career
Education and early work
Iribarren was born in Irún in 1900, the son of Plácido José Iribarren Aldaz, a wealthy businessman with properties in Cuba, and Teresa Cavanilles Sanz. The eldest of three brothers, he initially studied at the school in his hometown, where he excelled as a student of mathematics. After completing a baccalaureate at the high school in San Sebastián, he left for Madrid to study exact science, but changed his course in 1921 and began studying civil engineering, graduating in 1927 as the best-placed student on the course. Upon graduation, he initially worked for the Ministry of Public Works at the regional Catalonian roads department in Girona.
The Guipuzkoan ports, Mutriku and The Iribarren Number
Iribarren was transferred from Girona to his home province of Gipuzkoa in 1929, where he was appointed Chief Engineer of the Gipuzkoan Ports Group at the Ministry of Public Works, with an office in San Sebastián. In this role he was responsible for the ports of Deba, Isla de los Faisanes, Getaria, Mutriku, San Sebastián and Zumaia, along with overseeing the design and execution of several port and harbour projects. The role provided Iribarren with the opportunity to make detailed observations of the Gipuzkoan coastline, which informed his theories and research output. He undertook research into several aspects of breakwater and wave behaviour at each of the ports under his control, as well as the general Gipuzkoan coastline and Bay of Biscay.
Iribarren undertook extensive research at the Port of Mutriku, where he was responsible for the design and construction of a breakwater to the outer harbour in 1932. The works mitigated the approach and entry difficulties for shipping at the outer harbour area, but Iribarren observed that the existing vertical sea walls of the inner harbour were still causing significant wave reflection, leading to dangerous berthing conditions for ships once inside the mouth of the harbour. Despite initial opposition from the local fishing community, he was successful in implementing a sloping breakwater at the inner harbour in 1936, which ended the problems caused by reflection and made safe berthing of ships possible.