NUMERICAL MODELLING OF SOLITARY WAVE LOADS ON COASTAL BRIDGES USING SPH

Recent tsunamis in Indonesia (2004), Samoa (2009), Chile (2010), and Japan (2011) have caused severe damages both on human lives and coastal structures [1]. In the 2011Japan tsunami, more than 300 bridges were destroyed [2]. Current methods for estimating wave loads on coastal bridges ( [1], [3] and [4]) are presented mainly for normalsinusoidal water waves. Currently, no formula is available for design of bridges that may be subjected to solitary waves [5]. In other words, structural design codes do not consider tsunami forces to these structures. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the tsunami wave loads on bridge superstructures by numerical simulation using the SPH method and proposing applied formulae to calculate forces impinged on these structures. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first effort which implements the SPH scheme to study this problem.