Calibration of Tsunami Loading on a Damaged Building

Abstract

The survival of a large number of buildings in southern Thailand with minor structural damage under 2–6 m inundation heights above the ground in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy suggests that it is necessary to calibrate the formulas stipulated by FEMA-55 [2000] for computing tsunami loadings. In this study, the weather monitoring building of the Meteorological station at Takua Pa, Phang Nga is used as the case study. The building suffered only minor structural damage to the columns and girders. However, most of the nonstructural members such as infill brick panels were damaged, except a few which contributed to significant reserve strength against the tsunami attack. The FEMA-55 loading is calibrated with the actual building performance from a field load test. The maximum velocity that occurred at the site in that event is assessed, and a velocity suitable for computation of tsunami load for southern Thailand is recommended.

Building damage characteristics based on surveyed data and fragility curves of the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami

“…The influence of structural material and number of stories on the building resistance to tsunami inundation has been highlighted in a number of studies, such as Ruangrassamee et al (2006), Dominey-Howes and Papathoma (2007), Reese et al (2007Reese et al ( , 2011, Arikawa (2009), Koshimura et al (2009b), Lukkunaprasit et al (2010), Matsutomi and Harada (2010), Murao and Nakazato (2010), Leone et al (2011), Suppasri et al (2011) and Valencia et al (2011). They agreed that reinforced concrete (RC) or steel structures are stronger than wood or masonry structures and that multiple-story buildings (over three floors) are stronger than low-rise buildings (one or two floors).…”

Failure of Concrete Structure Under Tsunami Loading

“…The experimental study conducted by Lukkunaprasit et al 8) to evaluate the tsunami force acting on a building, was simulated for a building without openings. A scale of 1:100 had been adopted for the study and the size of the hydraulic flume was 40 m × 1 m × 1 m. In the experiment, the tsunami had been generated by the breaking of a solitary wave and the cubic model dimensions for the building were 150 mm × 150 mm × 150 mm.…”

“…2 shows the basic arrangement of the structure. When constructing the computational domain, the measured flow depth and velocity at the location of the structure (for the case without the structure) 8) were used as the inflow conditions at the boundary.…”

Inelastic Dynamic Analysis of an Rc Building Impacted by a Tsunami Water-Borne Shipping Container

“…Equation (1) can be used to evaluate the hydrodynamic force induced by quasi-steady flow which follows the surge force as observed in experiments conducted by Lukkunaprasit et al [2010].…”