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IUGG XXIV General Assembly July 2-13, 2007 Perugia, Italy
(S) - IASPEI - International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's
Interior
JSS002 Oral Presentation 1740
Numerical Simulations of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunamis: Coastal Effects
Prof. Philip Liu
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Cornell University IASPEI
Xiaoming Wang
The 2004 Sumatra earthquake and the associated tsunamis are one of the most devastating natural
disasters in the last century. The tsunamis flooded a huge coastal area in the surrounding countries,
especially in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, and caused enormous loss of human lives and
properties. In this paper, tsunami inundations in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka and North Banda Aceh,
Indonesia were simulated by using a finite difference model based on the shallow-water equations. The
calculated tsunami heights and inundations in these two regions are compared with the field
measurements and observations. Fairly good agreement is observed. Numerical results confirm again
that the local bathymetric and topographic characteristics play important roles in determining the
inundation area. Numerical simulations further indicate that although nonlinearity becomes important in
many dynamic aspects when tsunamis approach the shore, its influence on determining the inundation
area is relatively small in the regions examined for this tsunami event. Finally, the potential capability of
sediment transport and a force index on a virtual structure in flooded areas are introduced and
discussed.
Keywords: tsunami, inundation, sediment