Tsunami Simulations for Engineers Week

Story Posted: Wed, Feb 18, 2009

EUGENE (KMTR)

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters ever - but it gave engineers valuable research in their quest to save lives. OSU Engineers say one of the things we learned, is that people can go up in building so the 4 story the third story buildings are safe - because they're above where the tsunami comes in, but the structure has to withstand the wave.
Waves like that are fairly rare events, so at the Oregon State University Wave Basin they're recreated in special tanks.

Alicia Lyman-Holt is the Educational Outreach Coordinator for the lab. She says “it's a good estimation of what a tsunami gonna be like - it's just the part of the wave as it hits land because that's what we're interested in.”

OSU engineers say there's a 1 in 7 chance that a tsunami will happen in Oregon within the next 50 years. They use the town of Seaside for their model experiments because of low terrain.

According to Lyman-Holt, “people are going to need to get 50 feel above sea level to be safe from the wave and in some parts of Oregon that's gonna be a real challenge.”

Which is why engineers now believe a vertical evacuation is a better way. Engineers say it would be easier to save lives by building a tall sturdy structure that could withstand the wave.

Students were invited to this one of a kind lab to get a peek inside the work life of an engineer. “We have them design structures - and then they build them and they test them but we limit them in the ways that engineers would be limited, “says Lyman-Holt.

So the students were given time constraints, a budget and limited materials.

This is how one student described their structure, “It'll be sturdy enough that'll it'll hold it up.. But also so the water can go through so it doesn't cause as much damage to the building.”

The first wave test was about one story high. The second wave was almost two stories high.. Then they hit the structure with what was called a Hollywood wave.

Most of the structures survived the first two – but not the Hollywood wave. All of the structures were washed away except for the bottom floor of one..

Lyman-Holt says, “We want them to understand that engineers are working to improve their lives as people.”