TY - JOUR
T1 - Stability of Composite Breakwaters under Tsunami Attack
AU - Xu, Zhonghou
AU - Melville, Bruce W.
AU - Wotherspoon, Liam
AU - Nandasena, N. A.K.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by the Natural Hazards Research Platform and Napier Port Ltd. The authors would like to thank Dan Fray and Geoff Kirby for their help in the experimental setup and Graham Macky for his advice to improve the manuscript. The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their help in revising the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - Breakwaters are effective structures for mitigating tsunami-induced damage. However, pieces of the breakwater can be displaced by the turbulent tsunami flow, which undermines the stability of the breakwater and reduces its mitigation effectiveness. Assessing the damage to breakwaters in tsunami-prone coasts is, therefore, valuable for the port authority, cargo owners, and coastal residents. Physical experiments were conducted to assess potential damage to a typical composite breakwater in New Zealand due to tsunamis. Higher breakwaters can resist a stronger bore impact and experience delayed initiation of the same damage. A new parameter is proposed to assess the damage in the armor layer, which takes into account the size and density of armor units, the height of the breakwater, and the tsunami bore depth.
AB - Breakwaters are effective structures for mitigating tsunami-induced damage. However, pieces of the breakwater can be displaced by the turbulent tsunami flow, which undermines the stability of the breakwater and reduces its mitigation effectiveness. Assessing the damage to breakwaters in tsunami-prone coasts is, therefore, valuable for the port authority, cargo owners, and coastal residents. Physical experiments were conducted to assess potential damage to a typical composite breakwater in New Zealand due to tsunamis. Higher breakwaters can resist a stronger bore impact and experience delayed initiation of the same damage. A new parameter is proposed to assess the damage in the armor layer, which takes into account the size and density of armor units, the height of the breakwater, and the tsunami bore depth.
KW - Breakwater
KW - Dam-break flow
KW - Damage
KW - Stability
KW - Tsunami
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083074942&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85083074942&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1061/(ASCE)WW.1943-5460.0000571
DO - 10.1061/(ASCE)WW.1943-5460.0000571
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083074942
SN - 0733-950X
VL - 146
JO - Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering
JF - Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering
IS - 4
M1 - 04020011
ER -