[#ResearchHighlight] Seawalls vs Waves: Engineering a Safer Shoreline 🌊
How do we keep coastal homes safe from the raw power of the ocean? In this study published in Ocean Engineering (2024), Dr. Hai Van Dang and Prof. Sungwon Shin (along with collaborators Assoc. Prof. Hyoungsu Park, Prof. Taemin Ha, and Prof. Daniel T. Cox) investigated the efficacy of coastal defense structures in safeguarding buildings against tsunami-like overland flows.
Using olaFlow solver in OpenFOAM, the team built a digital "virtual lab" to see exactly how Seawalls (SW) and Submerged Breakwaters (SB) stand up against massive, tsunami-like surges.
What did they find?
🌊 The Shield Effect: Both Seawalls and Submerged Breakwaters significantly reduce the flow depth and velocity, effectively shielding the first row of buildings in an array.
🌊 Pressure Reduction: The study provides quantitative data on how these structures decrease peak pressures on building surfaces, with the seawall showing high effectiveness in reducing impulsive impact loads.
🌊 Digital Twin Power: The validated CFD model serves as a robust tool for assessing the complex interactions between extreme surges, structural defenses, and coastal urban layouts. By proving that their CFD model matches real-world laboratory physics, the team has created a reliable "blueprint" for testing future city layouts without having to build them first.
This research provides essential quantitative tools for engineers and urban planners to design more resilient coastal infrastructure against extreme flooding events.
Check out the work by Dr. Hai Van Dang and the team in Ocean Engineering below!: https://lnkd.in/g3XyEMti
#CoastalEngineering #OpenFOAM #FloodMitigation