Stability of Breakwater Armor Units against Tsunami Attacks

The design of breakwater armour units against tsunami attacks has received little attention in the past because of the comparative low frequency of these events and the rarity of structures designed specifically to withstand them. However, field surveys of recent events, such as the 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Tsunami and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, have shown flaws in the design of protection structures. During these extreme events, many breakwaters suffered partial or catastrophic damage. Although it is to be expected that most normal structures fail due to such high order events, practicing engineers need to possess tools to design certain important breakwaters that should not fail even during level 2 events. Research into the design of critical structures that only partially fail (i.e., “resilient” or “tenacious” structures) during a very extreme level 2 tsunami event should be prioritized in the future, and in this sense the present paper proposes a formula that allows the estimation of armour unit damage depending on the tsunami wave height.

Editorially Related : Esteban, M., Jayaratne, R., Mikami, T., Morikubo, I., Shibayama, T., Thao, N. D., Ohira, K., Ohtani, A., Mizuno, Y., Kinoshita, M. and Matsuba, S. 2016. Erratum for “Stability of Breakwater Armor Units against Tsunami Attacks” by Miguel Esteban, Ravindra Jayaratne, Takahito Mikami, Izumi Morikubo, Tomoya Shibayama, Nguyen Danh Thao, Koichiro Ohira, Akira Ohtani, Yusuke Mizuno, Mizuho Kinoshita, and Shunya Matsuba. Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering. 142 (4). https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WW.1943-5460.0000335