An integrated numerical method for simulation of drifted objects trajectory under real-world tsunami waves

The present study focused on tracing tsunami-drifted objects under a real tsunami based on an integrated numerical method. Instead of a solitary wave that is much shorter and steeper than real-world tsunami waves, an extra-long tsunami wave is represented here in a nearshore region using a new approach. To this end, propagation of a seismic tsunami from the source to the nearshore region was simulated using two-dimensional depth-averaged equations. When the waves reached the target coastal area, the time series of the free surface of the tsunami was approximated by a theoretical relation based on a combination of several solitons, which were then used to solve the linearized trajectory equation of the wave-maker to generate the intended time series of the tsunami wave. Finally, in a nearshore model, the movement of drifted bodies under the generated tsunami wave was simulated based on the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. In order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method in tracing the drifted bodies under a real tsunami, the giant fish-oil tank, which was transported about 300 m during the 2011 Tohoku tsunami of Japan, was selected as the benchmark. The results demonstrate that the time series of the long tsunami wave was successfully generated by the piston wave-maker in the GPU-based SPH model, and the proposed approach can be regarded as a suitable alternative for reproduction of a real tsunami. The results also showed that the simulated fish-oil tank properly followed the estimated trajectory in Ishinomaki but it was transported more than the reported distance, which was expected due to absence of a holding connection between the tank and the ground in the SPH model. It should be emphasized that this study is one of the first studies on three-dimensional tracing of a tsunami-drifted body during a real event, and the tracing can be more accurate in further simulations by applying higher-resolution topography data and faster computation systems that help include more details in the nearshore model.