Experimental Study on Stability of Breakwaters with Penetrating Box Foundations

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Experimental Study on Stability of Breakwaters with Penetrating Box Foundations

The breakwater with top sealed, shallow and wide penetrating box foundations is a new type of structure, applicable to deep water and soft seabed. The relations of horizontal and vertical bearing capacities of the box foundation structure as well as the instability induced failure modes to its dimensions and external loads are discussed through static model tests and wave tests. The mechanical properties of the stability of the box foundation are similar to those of embedded rigid foundations, i.e. the vertical stresses at the bottom of the box are distributed in a linear pattern under the action of vertical loads, and passive and active soil pressures are developed at the front and back sides of the box under the action of horizontal loads; there are two instability induced failure modes of the foundation structure-horizontal slide along the box base and tilting due to insufficient local vertical bearing capacity of the soil beneath the box base. The stability of box foundations can be analyzed by use of the methods applied to analysis of the embedded rigid foundations. To increase the width of the box is the most effective way to improve the stability of box foundations.