Foundation, Concrete and Earthquake Engineering

Simulation of Tsunami

Physical Process


Tsunamis generate through quite distant but three overlapping physical process:

i) Generation by any force that disturbs the water column.

ii) Propagation from deeper water near the source to shallow coastal areas.

iii) Finally, inundation of dry land and consequent destruction over coastal areas.


Generation is the process by which a seafloor disturbance reshapes the sea surface into a tsunami. The disturbance may be a movement along a fault.



Assumption

Modelers assume that an ocean-surface displacement is identical to that of the ocean bottom, but direct measurements of ocean-floor motion have never been available and it may not possible ever. Instead researchers use an idealized model of the quake; they assume that the crustal plates slip past one another along a simple, rectangular plane inside the earth.



Difficulties to Simulation


Even after these assumption, predicting the tsunamis initial height requires at least 10 descriptive parameters, which includes
→ The amount of slip on each side of the imaginary plane.

→ The length of crustal plate.

→ The width of crustal plate.


But, from the seismic data only


→ The orientation of the assumed fault plane

→ The quake location and depth

→ The quake magnitude

Can be interpreted.

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