Damage to grass dikes due to wave overtopping

Grass covers have been applied as an effective measure for protecting river levees and sea dikes. We conducted experiments to show how roots considerably improve the shear strength of soil on dike slopes. Roots of 1-year-old Bermuda and Carpet grass may increase the total shear strength of up to 20 kPa. Exposed to severe overtopping flow, dike...

Reliability-based analysis of river dikes during flood waves

Reliability and risk analyses are basic approaches, nowadays, for flood risk assessments in European countries such as the Netherlands, German, United Kingdom, etc. The methods also receive a lot of interest in developing countries. By considering uncertainties for both load and strength variables, the probability of failure for each element of...

Risk analysis of coastal flood defences: A Vietnam case

This paper aims at risk analysis and the investigation of safety aspects of coastal flood defences in Vietnam. The sea dike system has been actually designed by a 20 to 25 years return period. From the current situation it seems that the dike system is not sufficient to withstand the actual sea boundary conditions. Accurate safety assessment of...

A field experiment on beach growth in sand-dikes

The set-up and results of a field experiment on sand-dike breach erosion are described, It is found that the breaching process for the 2.2 m high sand-dike is similar to that in Visser's (1988) laboratory experiments with a 0.6 m high sand-dike. Confrontation of Visser's (1988) breach erosion model with the field data shows reasonable agreement...