Test 7. Subaerial landslide generated impulse waves in a wave channel: experimental SPH validation

Impulse waves in oceans, bays, lakes, or reservoirs are generated by landslides, rock falls, shore instabilities, snow avalanches, glacier calvings, or meteorite impacts. Examples are the 1958 Lituya Bay case in Alaska where the generated impulse wave reached a maximum run-up height of 524 m on the opposite shore or the 1963 Vaiont case in North Italy where an impulse wave overtopped a dam by about 70 m and killed 2,000 people. The mainly passive methods to face such catastrophes include evacuations, water level draw-down, or freeboard control in artificial reservoirs. They require detailed knowledge of the wave features and of the wave effects on the dam or shore line. Numerical methods such as SPH may play an important role in the future in predicting the effects of impulse waves since numerical models may result in more accurate predictions for complex geometries than general physical model studies at lower costs than specific physical case studies (Heller et al. 2009). This test case is one out of three experiments presented in Heller (2007), conducted in a wave channel with a still water depth h = 0.300 m. The results include the granular slide deformation prior and during impact into the water body, the wave generation including the temporal advance of velocity vector fields measured with Particle Image Velocimetry PIV, and the wave profiles measured with seven Capacitance Wave Gages CWGs.