ONE-STOREY HOUSE DESIGNS FOR TSUNAMIPRONE AREAS
Keywords:
Tsunami, house design, damage, strain gaugeAbstract
This study was concerned with the complete collapse of a house constructed on a beach that is prone to a tsunami. During such an incident, huge waves travelling at a very fastspeed would hit the house thereby causing it to either partially or completely collapse.A system was first designed and built in order to simulate a tsunami. It comprised a steel chamber housing a model sea and beach and a mass of concrete that can be freely dropped into the sea to generate a tsunami. Two types of model house were built to withstand such waves, with normal and hollow walls. Both had 2 types of front walls, one of which was a plane and the other a curve. In addition, there were 2 levels of slab in the experiment, one on the ground and one 10 cm above the ground. Strain gauges were installed on the front walls to measure the strains induced. A total of 8 different house forms were tested.Overall, it was found that between the normal wall and hollow wall houses, the strain level generated by the latter was much lower. In addition, between the houses having the slabon the ground and 10 m above the ground, it was observed that the latter had a lower strainlevel, owing to the waves not being able to reach the wall. Of all of the 8 test configurations,it was found that the hollow wall house with curved walls having the slab raised to 10 cmabove the ground had the best performance in terms of reducing the wave forces generated by the simulated tsunamis. This result may be employed for future construction of a house to be constructed close to a beach that is very likely to be hit by a tsunami for the purpose of keeping the main structure intact.
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