Lattice Boltzmann approach for hydro-acoustic waves generated by tsunamigenic sea bottom displacement

•Hydroacoustic waves resulting from tsunamigenic seabed movement are simulated by LBM.•LBM can properly handle both complex generation and propagation of hydroacoustic waves.•The effects of seabed unevenness and porosity are confirmed by LBM results.•LBM efficiency makes it appealing for planetary scale applications.

Tsunami waves are generated by sea bottom failures, landslides and faults. The concurrent generation of hydro-acoustic waves (HAW), which travel much faster than the tsunami, has received much attention, motivated by their possible exploitation as precursors of tsunamis. This feature makes the detection of HAW particularly well-suited for building an early-warning system. Accuracy and efficiency of the modeling approaches for HAW thus play a pivotal role in the design of such systems. Here, we present a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) for the generation and propagation of HAW resulting from tsunamigenic ground motions and verify it against commonly employed modeling solutions. LBM is well known for providing fast and accurate solutions to both hydrodynamics and acoustics problems, thus it naturally becomes a candidate as a comprehensive computational tool for modeling generation and propagation of HAW.