Tsunami Loads on a Representative Coastal Bridge Deck: Experimental Study and Validation of Design Equations

Abstract

Fluid impact forces on a bridge superstructure in the horizontal and vertical directions due to tsunami inundation, represented by a solitary wave, were investigated through a large-scale laboratory experiment and numerical simulations. The experiment was conducted in a two-dimensional large wave flume using a 1:5 scale steel girder and concrete slab bridge model, tested under shallow water waves at two water depths. Wave forces measured in the experiment were used to validate and assess the numerical predictive capability of a nonlinear hydrodynamic model. A numerical parametric study was conducted to determine the effect of variations in bridge elevation and wave height on the magnitude of the horizontal and vertical forces and overturning moment. Finally, an improved simplified design procedure based on the experimental and numerical results is proposed.