Effect of structure orientation and debris initial orientation on peak debris loading during tsunami: an experimental and numerical investigation

The impact of the debris during extreme events is one of the major factors that has to be accounted for the critical design of the coastal structures. This study, investigates the effect of peak impact load due to combination of debris and the hydraulic bore on a structure with varying orientation angles. The bore profile is generated by using dam-break condition and a shipping container that is based on the ISO criteria fitted with an accelerometer, is used as a debris in this study. The peak impact load due to the combination of debris and the bore is measured by the multi-axial load cell that is mounted at the bottom of the modelled structure. It is observed that the orientation angle of the structure plays a major role in identifying the peak debris impact load. Therefore, a new coefficient of orientation angle, ‘C_θ’ is proposed to modify the basic impulse-momentum equation; that accounts for the excess loads on the structure. The experimental study is reproduced and simulated using particle based numerical method ‘δ-SPH’ and the results are validated with experimental observations. Further, the δ-SPH model is used to carry out detailed parametric study by varying the debris mass.