Abstract
A series of hydraulic model experiments was systematically and carefully carried out to estimate the stability of various types of armor units for a harbor-side rubble mound of a composite breakwater against a water jet caused by an impinging bore-like tsunami. Armor stones of weight 1 ton were seen to be easily removed by the tsunami flow. Flat type concrete blocks with well-arranged holes showed high stability. In the case of using wave-dissipating blocks, the total stability of the armor layer was enhanced by placing heavier blocks along the toe of the slope. Numerical analysis was also carried out to investigate the effect of the shape of the blocks. The computed time series of water level and the behavior of the impinging jet agreed well with the experimental ones. The computational result of hydrodynamic forces acting on armor blocks revealed that the uplift forces were largely decreased by the holes in the blocks.
Highlights
Many breakwaters were damaged by the tsunami generated by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11th, 2011
The damage at the toe of the slope was not taken into account because the armor units placed at the toe of the slope do not cover the main part of the reinforced mound
A series of hydraulic experiments was carried out to estimate the stability of various types of armor units for a harbor-side rubble mound of composite breakwaters against water jet caused by an impinging bore-like tsunami
Summary
Many breakwaters were damaged by the tsunami generated by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11th, 2011. This was a formerly inconceivable type of failure (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism 2013). Arikawa et al (2013) conducted a hydraulic model experiment to reproduce the failure of the breakwaters. Large stones or concrete blocks with sufficient stability will be required to cover the surface of the reinforced mound because the reinforced mound will be exposed to the severe action of a water jet caused by the impinging bore-like tsunami. Numerical analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of the shape of the blocks
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