Open AccessExperimental Verification of FEMA P646 Tsunami Loading
Author(s) -
Panitan Lukkunaprasit,
Nuttawut Thanasisathit,
Harry Yeh
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of disaster research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.332
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1883-8030
pISSN - 1881-2473
DOI - 10.20965/jdr.2009.p0410
Subject(s) - emergency management , agency (philosophy) , geology , forensic engineering , engineering , law , political science , philosophy , epistemology
The 2004 catastrophe of the Indian Ocean tsunami prompted scientists and engineers to develop better guidelines for economically designed essential buildings that are capable of withstanding tsunami forces. A recent design guidelines document – FEMA P646 [1] published by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – proposes a practical method to estimate the tsunami design forces at a given locality with a known maximum tsunami runup height. This paper focuses on verifying the method stipulated in FEMA P646 through laboratory experiments, assuming the beach condition similar to Kamala beach in Phuket, Thailand, which suffered great losses by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Our experimental results confirm that the predicted forces provide a reasonable upper bound for the measured forces.