Abstract: Background The floating breakwater has been favored by experts and scholars at home and abroad due to its advantages such as good wave dissipation, lightweight, economy and environmental protection, etc. The research team in this paper developed and deployed the High Density Polyethylene(HDPE) floating raft-type breakwater in the relevant sea area before this time, which could effectively reduce the wave intensity within a certain range. The results of field test showed that its wave dissipation efficiency reached -33.33% to -42.86%. Objective The study aimed to further optimize the wave dissipation performance of the HDPE floating raft-type breakwater and provide reliable experimental basis.Methods This paper conducted flume tank simulation experiments on the damping net of HDPE floating raft-type breakwater, and studied the wave dissipation effect of the damping net by analyzing the influence of various factors on the wave height and wave energy. Results The experimental results showed that the mesh size (2a), number of net meshes (N), spacing between net meshes (D), and draft depth of net meshes (d) of the damping net all affected their wave dissipation effect.1)The wave dissipation effect of the net meshes increased with the decrease of the mesh size and the increase of the number of net meshes. 2)Under the experimental wave condition of wave height (H)6 cm wave steepness(\fracHL)=0.038, L is the wavelength, the spacing among net meshes arranged at 115 cm had better wave dissipation effect than those at 1.5 cm.Under the experimental wave condition of wave height 10 cm (\fracHL=0.045), the mesh size and the number of net meshes had crucial impact on the wave dissipation effect of net meshes.When the mesh size was 1 mm and number of net meshes was more than 4, the spacing between net meshes arranged at 1.5 cm had better wave dissipation effect than those at 115 cm.When the mesh size was 4 mm, that the spacing between net meshes arranged at 1.5 cm also had better wave dissipation effect than those at 115 cm.3)Under the wave conditions of wave height 6 cm (\fracHL=0.038) and 10 cm (\fracHL=0.045), the larger the draft depth of net meshes, the better the wave dissipation effect.However, when the ratio (\fracdh) of the draft depth of net meshes to the water depth of the tank (h) reached 0.2, the influence of that on the wave dissipation effect became moderate. When the draft depth of net meshes was smaller, the net meshes performed better in the wave dissipation effect under the wave condition of wave height 6 cm (\fracHL=0.038).When the draft depth of net meshes was more than 64 cm and \fracdh approached 1.0, the net meshes performed better in the wave dissipation effect under the wave condition of wave height 10 cm (\fracHL=0.045). Conclusion Therefore, while ensuring structural strength, we can optimize the net meshes configuration by considering parameters like mesh size, number of net meshes, spacing between net meshes, and draft depth of net meshes, combined with the wave characteristics of the target sea area. This approach balances wave dissipation performance and cost, fully leveraging the wave dissipation potential of net meshes.