Tsunami Bore Impingement onto a Vertical Column

Abstract

In a laboratory wave tank, bores were generated by dam-break: by lifting a gate that initially separated quiescent shallow water from a volume of impounded water. The study was motivated by the problem of tsunami-structure interaction and sought to further the understanding of interactions between the bore-like flow of a broken tsunami wave and structures of different cross sections. Experiments were designed to observe the structure’s effect on the bore as well as the bore’s effect on the structure. This comprehensive study used highly repeatable experiments to measure water-surface variations, velocity flow fields, and forces exerted by bores on vertically erected columns. The temporal and spatial variations of the water-surface elevations were quantified with a Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) technique; velocity flow fields were recorded with a combination of Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV) and Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV); forces on the columns were measured with a miniature load-cell transducer. The laboratory data obtained in the study are available for validating numerical models that predict forces on structures in unsteady flows.