Author(s): Ioan Nistor, Nils Goseberg, Jacob Stolle
Linked Author(s): Ioan Nistor
Keywords: Debris, tsunami, physical modelling, built environment, coastal engineering
Abstract: Recent tsunami, such as the 2011 Tohoku and the 2015 Chilean, have shown that in addition to hydraulic loading, debris loads are a critical load to consider in the design of tsunami resistant infrastructure. The ASCE7 Chapter 6: Tsunami Loads and Effects represents a new standard that addresses the spatial distribution of debris associated with large-scale debris impact, such as shipping containers and shipping vessels. Many of this standard's prescriptions are based on analysis of a limited data set from a post-tsunami field survey following the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami in Japan. This paper presents result of an experimental study dealing with debris motion in tsunami-like flow conditions that analyzes the motion of debris in a built environment comparing the results to the previous debris motion studies and prescriptions of the ASCE7 standard. From the experiments, the authors concludes that the presence of macro-roughness in a built environment causes the loss of momentum of the inundating surge and the trapping of debris resulting in a reduction of the maximum longitudinal displacement of the debris. The study also found that the debris tended to propagate within the deep, high-velocity jets created by the flow constrictions, creating preferred transport paths for the debris
Year: 2017