Caisson Seawalls

Le Portier, Monaco

Monaco has created 6 hectares of newly retained land at Le Portier, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, held back from the sea with 18 new caissons that were constructed in France and floated to Monaco.

Since there is no breakwater off the shore of Le Portier, the caissons were specially designed with slotted water chambers facing the sea to help dissipate the force of incoming sea waves.

“Slotted vertical barriers are much cheaper than the rubble mound breakwaters as materials required for vertical slotted barriers is about 10% of material required for the rubble mound breakwater.”

—

Gedda & Rao, “A Review on Stability of Caisson Breakwater” (2019)

Using rubble instead of slots would have resulted in less new land being retained, because the sea becomes deeper seaward at the site and would have required more offset from the deeper water.

Figure 1: The caissons were designed to have two sets of vertical chambers. Hollow chambers facing the sea (foreground in this figure) will accept sea water inflow and outflow. The chambers toward land (background in this figure) will be filled in. [Bouygues]

Figure 2: Vertical slots are built on the opening facing the sea. [Bouygues]

Figure 3: Scale drawing of a caisson with wave wall, and size of a person and cement truck for scale. [Bouygues]

No ships will dock on the caisson wall of the new land. There is already a port nearby. The new land is for construction of residential buildings.

Figure 3: Building construction on the newly retained land, Le Portier, Monaco. [Carbonaro]

For strengthening of the new land, sea bottom silt was removed before filling in with new fill, and compaction and pile driving were used.

The French construction company Bouygues reports they constructed each caisson on a semi-submersible barge in Marseille.

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Caisson Seawalls

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Introduction
Quays
Quay Construction
Singapore
Tema, Ghana
Monaco (this page)
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Hitachinaka, Japan
Slip Form
Seawater Construct
Breakwater

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