Probabilistic design of breakwaters in shallow hurricane-prone areas

One of the failure mechanisms of a rubble mound breakwater is the failure of its armour layer. In order to determine the stability of an armour layer, the design load has to be defined, which is in fact the wave that attacks the structure. Being a highly stochastic phenomenon, the wave action is not easily defined, while there is always some uncertainty inherent to its definition. In a deterministic calculation this uncertainty is being left to engineering judgment, as the possible variations of the design wave height are not taken into account in a coherent way. In order to explicitly incorporate uncertainties into the design process, and therefore increase its reliability, probabilistic design methods should be applied. A commonly used approach is a semi-probabilistic computation, which introduces the application of partial safety coefficients. Nevertheless the indicated methods to derive and apply them do not clarify the uncertainties incorporated, adding an undefined degree of safety in the process, or end up with incorrect results under certain conditions. Another approach is a fully probabilistic computation. This type of design tackles explicitly a great deal of uncertainties, hence its results can be considered much more accurate. However it is not commonly used, due to the fact that there are not straightforward guidelines to support it, and therefore a number of critical decisions by the designers are required. This paper focuses on the application of probabilistic methods for armour layer design of rubble mound breakwaters. The main objective is to indicate the weaknesses of the previously mentioned methods, and to suggest a probabilistic design approach that is both attractive to designers and sufficiently reliable. This can be achieved through elaboration of a design example with the various methods, followed by a critical evaluation of the results.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience