Laboratory Investigations on

Laboratory Investigations on

Subaerial Landslide Generated Waves

Subaerial landslides falling into water body generate impulsive water waves that are usually referred to as a class of tsunami waves. It is important to investigate on characteristics of the impulsive wave in near and far field in coastal and dam reservoir design. The most reliable and possible methods to this investigation is laboratory experiments.

An experimental investigation has been performed on impulsive waves caused by subaerial landslide at civil engineering department of Sharif University. At these experiments a wide range of effective parameters are considered and studied by performing 120 laboratory tests. Considered slide masses are both rigid and deformable. The effects of bed slope angle, water depth, slide impact velocity, geometry, shape and deformation on impulse wave characteristics have been inspected. the variable parameters in performed experiments can be listed as follow: slide specifications such as shape, volume (V_s), thickness (t_s), length parallel to the bed slope (l_s) and rigidity (will be explained), sliding bed slope angle (α), initial position of slide (h_0C), and still water depth in wave tank (h0).

The water surface fluctuations were measured using eight pressure gauges located at the central axis of the tank. The gauges are Validyne D15 differential pressure transducers (DPD-D15). The measured data have been used to investigate the tsunami wave pattern caused by underwater landslide.

The moving pattern of underwater slides is captured in experiments with a 25 frame per second digital camera. The location of mass center of slides is determined during sliding down at 0.04-second time step. The location is measured parallel to the bed slope and the S-t curve is determined where S is the slide mass center location.

Detail specifications and data of experiments could be downloaded here as Test specifications, Landslide kinematics data and Impulse Wave Data.

Test Specification