The largest tsunami simulator in Europe is built in England

The largest tsunami simulator in Europe is built in England

Developed with funds from the ERC, it will serve to prevent damage to buildings and coastal areas

   Researchers from the University College of London and the specialist company in consultancy and hydraulic research HR Wallingford are collaborating to build the continent's largest tsunami simulator, a complex that will help to better understand the impact of these devastating natural phenomena on buildings and coastal defenses.

The facility, which is being financed by a grant of 1.9 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC), will be 70 meters long and 4 meters wide, which will allow for the first time simulate the impact of a tsunami in urban areas, making a detailed model of the effects they have on the coast. For example, how water is channeled around groups of buildings.

    The new tsunami generator will also be used to assess whether current defenses are effective against tsunamis and floods, or if they could amplify the destructive capacity of the tsunami by allowing water to accumulate in front of the defenses and then, when collapsed, cause flooding of later areas, causing more devastation in places that were previously considered safe.

This new generator allows to produce a simulated tsunami by means of a hydraulic system, adapted from the methods that allow to create tides in leisure pools or those that serve to train surfers.

Wave pool technique

These much longer waves act very differently from conventional storm waves, both in the natural world and in the laboratory, where they are simulated using wave machines for piston movement. The new facility that is being built improves and extends the technique, allowing to create both directed crest waves and small tsunamis directed in a laboratory environment.

It is intended that the research, once completed, will allow researchers to produce an engineering guide that can help in disaster management around the world. Tiziana Rossetto, the professor of seismic engineering at the UCL who leads the research, said that "tsunamis can be exceptionally destructive when they reach buildings, but really not much is known about how the massive horizontal forces they generate act on buildings The challenge has been to build a testing center in which we can accurately model these forces in a variety of physical structures, "just as they will study" how forces change or are magnified by the way in which buildings are grouped into towns or coastal cities. "

The research of these scientists will, according to Rossetto, have "far-reaching implications for both urban construction and design in areas at risk of tsunamis, and could also help mitigate some of the most devastating risks of these phenomena."

For his part, William Allsop, Technical Director of Maritime Structures at HR Wallingford and in charge of supervising the development of the installation and the subsequent investigation, commented in a press release that his contribution to the project will be based on "modeling the new installation using advanced computational fluid dynamics tools developed at Wallingford, thus ensuring that the new facility has the broadest possible capabilities in tsunami modeling. "