FAULT TREE ANALYSIS OF APPLICATION OF GEOSYNTHETICS TO SHORE PROTECTION BASED ON LITERATURE REVIEWS AND TANK EXPERIMENTS

Abstract

 A literature review of 47 cases of applications of geosynthetics to shore protection in 16 countries was conducted. A fault tree for coastal structures constructed using geosynthetics was proposed based on 14 cases of bad practice. Important bottlenecks against which countermeasures need to be taken were identified as being the following: instability of sand bags, a scour on the tip of the sand tube, expansion of water channels and rupture of geosynthetic material. Wave tank experiments were conducted for assessing the process of collapse of submerged coastal structures by wave attack. Experimental results showed that the stability of a submerged sand-bag depends on both the extent to which the sand-bag is filled and the direction of wave attack. This result suggests the need for a new method for determining the stability of submerged coastal structures constructed using geosynthetics.