Author(s)

S. A. Lashteh Neshaei, M. A. Mehrdad & M. Gholipour Salimi

Abstract

Seawalls are commonly constructed to prevent landward erosion of shorelines and maintain configuration of the area behind them against wave action. Recently, rising of sea level particularly in the northern coastline of Iran, has caused special attention to the design and construction of seawalls in that region. One of the important factors in the design of seawalls and stability control of such structures is their safety factor (SF) against overturning. The present study considers all effective parameters on the stability of seawalls, appropriate equations are presented for calculation of the safety factor against overturning. The equations are presented in such a way that designers can easily use them. Furthermore, different design curves are also obtained by sensitivity analysis of seawall stability. The results obtained from this study can be easily implemented and used for design of crucial cases. Also, using the presented equations can be a great help for the optimum design of seawalls against different load combinations, particularly for earthquake forces. The results of the present study clearly indicate that the optimum dimensions for a typical rectangular or trapezoidal concrete seawall, as far as the stability of such structure is concerned, highly depends on the slenderness of the wall (ratio of the wall height to wall width). Increasing this value from a critical range of 1.5 to 2 results in a drastic drop of the safety factor against overturning. Also the presence of earthquake forces enhances this reduction leading to a narrow-bound confidence interval for the safety of concrete seawalls. Keywords: seawall, safety factor, earthquake, wave, overturning.

Keywords

seawall, safety factor, earthquake, wave, overturning.