This paper describes application of the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method to calculate the broken solitary wave pressure on a vertical barrier. First, the model is verified for the case of solitary wave runup on the uniform sloping beach. The results are confirmed with experimental data. Second, the model is applied to reproduce the solitary wave pressure on the vertical barrier in the wave flume experiment.
The study of terminal effects of tsunami have been primarily limited to the observation of tsunami damage, high water mark in the region, scour, and deposition of both sediments and floating debris. There have been a few laboratory and theoretical studies of hydrodynamic loads imposed on the structures by the impact of tsunamis. Ramsden (1993) had experimentally examined the impact pressure induced by bore and computed it numerically. The bore is generated by a broken solitary wave. Oumeraci et al. (1994) also computed the wave pressure at the breaking stage with SOLA-VOF (Hirt, et al., 1980). The main limitation of SOLA-VOF is a poor representation of obstacle/structure. The slope is constructed by simply blocking out the mesh cells. This can introduce the unexpected "stair effect". Consequently, the reflected wave would be theoretically larger than expected. The objective of this paper is to study the pressure of solitary broken wave. Following Ramsden (1993), the bore is produced by a broken solitary wave on a vertical barrier. The numerical model based on Navier-Stokes equations coupled with Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is applied to simulate the run up and pressure on the vertical wall. Following Hirt (1985), the obstacle representation is improved to minimized the "stair effect".
