Flexible geotextile structures are widely used in coastal engineering, such as geotextile mattress used in bottom protection engineering and sand-filled geotextile tube used in reclamation project. This kind of structure can adapt to varying bathymetry condition quite well and has significant engineering effect, but when the sediment under the structure was eroded and cavity occurs, this geotextile material may be ripped at continuous wave action, especially in the shallow water zone. However, the failure mechanism is still not clear. The dynamic response of geotextile structure in regular waves was firstly studied. In order to study tensile stress in the geotextile structures caused by wave, a series of 2-D physical models were designed. Under a selected geotextile structure condition, numbers of tensile force sensor were addicted around the edge of the geotextile material, and then fixed at the bottom of the wave flume. By changing wave parameter and water depth, the relationship between tensile stress and wave parameters were obtained and discussed. It turns out that the tensile force detected in the experiment is much less than the upper limit of material's tensile strength, which means that the geotextile may not be easily damaged just by the tensile stress caused by waves. It is suggested that the structure may break out due to abrasion between the structure and the internal material. Details of the discussion on the experimental data will be presented. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.