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Abstract: During the last decade, partial safety factor systems have been adopted in the design standards of coastal structures, which are based on probabilistic theories but have a format similar to the traditional safety factor system. Tetrapod is one of the widely used breakwater armor units in the world. The previous partial safety factor system was developed based on limited wave and structure data in several locations. In this paper, a partial safety factor system for Tetrapod armor units is developed by performing reliability analysis and optimal code calibration for 116 breakwater cross-sections and wave conditions in 31 harbors in Korea. The partial safety factors associated with different ranges of the shape parameter of the Weibull extreme wave height distribution for different target probabilities of failure are proposed. For other types of extreme distributions, the skewness of the distribution should be calculated and the partial safety factors of the Weibull distribution of the same skewness could be used (the skewness of the Weibull distribution changes with the shape parameter). The developed system is applied to existing breakwaters to examine its applicability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In Korea, Tetrapods have been widely used to protect rubble mound breakwaters against erosion due to wave action. The deterministic design method has been used based on Hudson or van der Meer formula. In this study, we have performed reliability analyses for thus designed Tetrapod armors of 12 trade harbors and 8 coastal harbors in Korea. It is found that there is a linear relationship between the safety factor and the probability of failure; the larger the safety factor, the smaller the probability of failure. It is also found that the probability of failure during 50-year service lifetime is about 60% for the Tetrapod armors designed by the deterministic design method with the safety factor of 1.0. This finding seems to be natural since the encounter probability that a breakwater will experience storm waves greater than the design wave during its lifetime is 63% if the lifetime is set equal to the design return period. The results of this study could provide a guideline for determining the target probability of failure of Tetrapod armors in the future. A similar approach could be used for armor units other than Tetrapods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliability design methods have been developed for breakwater designs since the mid-1980s. The reliability design method is classified into three categories depending on the level of probabilistic concepts being employed, i.e. Level 1, 2, and 3 methods. Each method gives results in different forms, but all of them can be expressed in terms of probability of failure so that the difference can be compared among the different methods. In this study, we apply the reliability design methods to the stability of armor blocks and sliding of caissons of the breakwater of Donghae Harbor located in the east coast of Korea, which was constructed by traditional deterministic design methods to be damaged in 1987 and reinforced in 1991. Analyses are made for the breakwaters before the damage and after the reinforcement. The allowable probability of failure of a Tetrapod armor layer of 50 year's lifetime is proposed as 40% for existing stability formulas, whilst that for caisson sliding as 20% with the failure criterion for the cumulative sliding distance over the lifetime of 0.1 m. The probability of failure before the damage is much higher than the allowable value for both stability of armor blocks and sliding of caissons, indicating that the breakwater was under-designed. The probability of failure for the reinforced breakwater is lower than the allowable value, indicating that the breakwater became stable after the reinforcement. On the other hand, the results of different reliability design methods were in fairly good agreement, confirming that there is not much difference among the different methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]