Experimental and Numerical Study on the Wave, Surge, and Structure Interactions on a Coastal Residential Building

Abstract

Residential structures in the low-lying coastal region are often suffered from devastate coastal disasters, like storms and tsunamis. To minimize the loss and improve the resilience of a coastal community, it is crucial to understand structural damage and failure mechanism under extreme from extreme coastal events. Large-scale laboratory experiments of wood-framed residential houses were conducted to investigate the wave and surge effect on the structure and the structural failure mechanism. The tests were conducted by changing a surge level, wave period, and wave height condition, and measure hydro-kinematics and structural damage process. LIDAR scanning was conducted to collect the data of damage proportion on the structure during series of wave and surge conditions. A three-dimensional RANS model, olaFlow, was used to verify our numerical model, and applied to understand hydrodynamics near the structure. Three different wave breaking conditions, including non-breaking, breaking, and broken wave are tested and consequent wave induced forces on structure are compared for both undamaged structure and damaged structure conditions. The numerical model results showed a good agreement with the experimental results in water surface and velocity. The numerical results of wave induced force in damaged conditions showed 28 similar to 43% smaller than those in undamaged conditions. This finding highlight that the damage level of a structure could affect predicting wave load on the structure.