THE INFLUENCE OF WAIST THICKNESS OF DOLOSSE ON THE HYDRAULIC STABILITY OF DOLOSSE ARMOUR

Abstract

The paper presents results from experiments with Dolosse having the same mass and volume but with different waist thickness to height ratios. The armour was exposed to irregular waves simulating one storm with increasing wave heights and the effect of waist to height ratio on the hydraulic stability was studied. A low packing density of approximately 0.65 was used corresponding to a two-layer armour with high porosity. From the results it is concluded that the hydraulic stability of Dolos armour is not very sensitive to variations in the waist to height ratio. Only for damage levels exceeding displacement of approximately 5% of the armour blocks in the most exposed area there seems to be a significant decrease in hydraulic stability with increasing waist to height ratio. Thus the waist ratio only influences the residual hydraulic stability. Based on a short discussion of stressed in armour units it is concluded that design criteria solely based on movements of armour units as observed in hydraulic models are not adequate for the assessment of structural integrity of the units. The paper also presents the results of each stability test as well as the scatter and the distributions. The large scatter found underlines the need for adoption of more restrictive safety factors than generally used in rubble mound breakwater design. It also supports the idea of a probabilistic approach in the design process.