ON THE GENERATION OF TSUNAMI IN A LARGE SCALE WAVE FLUME

Abstract

This paper presents very long, i.e. real tsunami-like wave generation in a large scale wave flume using a piston type wave maker. Waves of periods between 30 s and more than 100 s were generated at 1 m water depth using two different approaches: (i) deriving the wave board motion directly by integration of the water surface elevation, composed of a different number of solitons (sech2 waves) and (ii) using an iterative self correcting method (SCM). The importance of very long wave generation instead of solitary waves and the necessity for long testing facilities is discussed and results from GWK experiments are presented for single pulses (elongated solitons), N-waves and real tsunami records, either approximated as a combination of solitons or applying the SCM to the time series directly.