COASTAL HAZARDS @ VIRGINIA TECH
NEESR: Tsunami runup and withdrawal dynamics on a sloping beach with discontinuous macro-roughness
Funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CMMI 1206271)
Tsunamis are a leading natural threat to coastal communities, and events such as the 2011 Japan, 2010 Chile, and 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis caused widespread, crippling damages to coastal infrastructure. Yet, these events also revealed the role of mangroves and other vegetation as sustainable mitigation against tsunami hazard. The overarching goal of this research is to develop a quantitative understanding of tsunami inundation in regions with coastal forests. This project combines detailed fluid dynamics modeling with physical experiments to study tsunami inundation in the presence of discontinuous coastal forest. The transformative nature of this research lies in studying the effects of multi-scale processes on the large-scale tsunami inundation dynamics relevant for improving tsunami mitigation and preparedness. Laboratory experiments are used to study inundation in discontinuous forest, represented by circular patches of cylinder arrays. Measurements are used to quantify mean flow and turbulence statistics, the spatial flow field between two forest patches, runup speed, and large-scale flow structures during withdrawal. Numerical analyses are integrated with the experimental campaign to expand the parameter set for analysis. [text modified from NSF summary]
Acknowledgements & Credits: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Background photo courtesy of Sadatsugu Tomizawa (Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
© 2016 Jennifer L. Irish & Robert Weiss. All Rights Reserved.