Failure mechanism of kamaishi breakwaters due to the great east Japan earthquake Tsunami

Abstract

Many breakwaters were damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. The majority of the breakwaters were destroyed or deformed under tsunami overflow; however, the failure mechanism under tsunami overflow is not clear. Therefore, with the main objective of this report being to clarify the stability of breakwaters under tsunami overflow, hydraulic model experiments and numerical simulations were conducted with Kamaishi Bay breakwaters as the subject, and failure mechanisms of the trunk of the breakwaters were examined.