International Journal Of Coastal, Offshore And Environmental Engineering(ijcoe)

International Journal Of Coastal, Offshore And Environmental Engineering(ijcoe)

Reliability Analysis of Berm Breakwaters based on the environmental data on the Northern coasts of Oman sea

Document Type : Original Research Article

Authors
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/ijcoe.2026.513763.1154
Abstract
Berm Breakwaters (BB) are reshaping coastal structures which can be classified as Hardly, Partly, and Fully Reshaping (HR, PR, and FR) breakwaters based on their stability. This study evaluates the reliability of different berm breakwaters using environmental data from the Iran's southern coast region. The D-Vine structure was identified as the most suitable for analyzing dependencies between input variables. Two failure modes, wave overtopping and berm recession were used to assess reliability through current deterministic design methods. The findings show that dependencies between input variables generally had a minor impact on the calculated probability of failure (Pf). However, ignoring these dependencies can lead to underestimated designs, especially when wave height and water level strongly correlate. The study also found that the current deterministic design criteria for berm breakwaters are more conservative compared to conventional rubble mound breakwaters. This is due to the additional berm width based on Dn50. Among different berm breakwater types, HR breakwaters, with larger armor units and smaller berm recessions, had the lowest berm failure probability. In contrast, the overtopping Pf values is almost the same for all the BB types. The results of this study shows the importance of including dependencies between input variables and paying attention to the required safety margin in reliability design of berm breakwaters based on conventional meethods.
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 26 July 2026