Mechanical behavior of anisotropic sand ground bearing coastal structure and its evaluation

Composite breakwaters, covered with wave dissipating blocks, are widely employed in Japan. However, a large amount of failures have occurred in many ports in Japan. Wave-induced failures of caisson-breakwaters by Typhoon 18, 2004 have been recently reported for several ports in Hokkaido, Japan (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau, 2008).