 |
||
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina Storm Surge on Bridges and Buildings (and accompanying press released dated April 11, 2007) "A lot of the hurricane damage along the Mississippi coastline came from storm surges -- not from high winds or levee flooding that occurred in the New Orleans area," said Yin Lu "Julie" Young, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University. "Storm surges result in very different mechanisms. When it comes to forces on a structure, what happens in a storm surge is very similar to what happens in a tsunami." (from the press release) The storm surge associated with Hurricane Katrina caused tremendous damage along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Similar damage was observed subsequent to the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004. In order to gain a better understanding of the performance of engineered structures subjected to coastal inundation due to tsunami or hurricane storm surge, the authors surveyed damage to bridges, buildings and other coastal infrastructure subsequent to Hurricane Katrina. Numerous lessons were learned from analysis of the observed damage, and these are reported herein. A number of structures experienced significant structural damage due to storm surge and wave action. Structural members submerged during the inundation were subjected to significant hydrostatic uplift forces due to buoyancy, enhanced by trapped air pockets, and hydrodynamic uplift forces due to wave action. Any floating or mobile object in the nearshore/on-shore areas can become floating debris, affecting structures in two ways: impact and water-damming. Foundation soils and foundation systems are at risk from shear- and liquefaction-induced scour, unless designed appropriately. (from the abstract) |
||
|
Click Button To View:
