ABSTRACT
A cylindrical breakwater is an innovative structure evolved from suction foundation by using reinforced concrete cylinders. A certain length of cylindrical breakwater is built up by placing several units of prefabricated structure of largediameter cylinders. The centrifuge model tests were designed in reference to the current practice in Tianjin Port, China, where large-diameter cylinders 12 m in diameter and 8.5 m in height are used. Each unit has 6 cylinders joined together to a 27 m × 27 m plate. As shown in Figure 1, the lower
1 INTRODUCTION
It is very important to get to know the behavior of any new structure built on weak ground especially in extremely adverse environment in order to verify its feasibility and then to establish its procedure of design. Since 2000, 10 research programs have been carried out to verify the design schemes of new structures of sheet piled bulkhead and centrifuge model testing has recently been proven a powerful tool to provide such service to the engineers in the development of two novel concrete diaphragm sheet-piled bulkheads in China (Cai et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006; Xu et al. 2006, 2007).
