Advances In Evaluating Tsunami Forces on Coastal Structures

Keynote lecture by Tiziana Rossetto

This paper presents a brief overview of the current knowledge and research gaps in the evaluation of tsunami forces on coastal structures. It presents the need for a systematic analysis of the physics of tsunami flows in and around buildings and the forces and pressures they produce on structures as a function of time. The first steps towards such a study are presented. Through a combination of large-scale physical experiments reproducing the forces generated by extremely long, tsunami-like, waves on instrumented building models, and small-scale tests of steady flows around rectangular cylinders, it is shown that steady-state approximations of drag force can potentially represent the unsteady case of tsunami flows around buildings. Significant limitations surround this observation and hence, plans to continue the study are presented.