Tsunami force estimation for beachfront traditional buildings with elevated floor slab in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Tsunamis have received increased worldwide awareness since their unprecedented occurrences in the Indian Ocean and Tohoku in 2004 and 2011, respectively. In this study, the impact of tsunami on a building with an elevated floor slab was investigated at a reduced scale of 1:100 and compared with that of a slab-on-grade building. Three nominal wave conditions were tested to study the effects of tsunamis on each building model type. The tsunami-like wave forces and pressures on the building model were measured in the experiment. Results showed that the existence of an elevated floor slab significantly reduced the horizontal force on building upon the impingement of the initial wave. When the nominal wave height was higher than the building model height, the wave-induced horizontal force was overestimated by the Japanese design method. The maximum vertical resultant force on the elevated building model manifested a linear trend with increasing wave-exposed height up to a maximum force of approximately 3.8 N when the building model was fully submerged. This study also presented a proposed methodology for tsunami force estimation of the front and back faces of a building with an elevated floor slab.

KEYWORDS:

• Tsunami
• elevated floor slab
• horizontal force
• vertical resultant force
• wave pressure

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia through ScienceFund Research Grant (04-01-05-SF0562) and JICA Project for AUN/SEED-Net through Collaborative Research for Alumni (CRA) 2013. The authors greatly appreciate the contributions by Mr. Kenny Chia in carrying out the hydraulic experiment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency [USMCRA-1301];Kementerian Sains, Teknologi dan Inovasi [04-01-05-SF0562];