Partial safety factor system for Tetrapod armor layer depending on shape parameter of extreme wave height distribution

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.