Damage Estimation of a Steel-Framed Building under Tsunami Flow Occurring after Earthquake

The Great East Japan Earthquake and the following tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011 caused a significant disaster along the ocean side of the Tohoku area. The big tsu nami carried different kinds of debris such as ships and cars up the stream, which caused additional damage to the buildings in the area. In this chapter, a finite element approach for the damage estimation of a steel-framed building under tsunami flow is described. A seismic wave recorded during the earthquake was first applied to the model, followed by an input of fluid forces owing to the tsunami wave. A three-dimensional free-surface- flow analysis code based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method was adopted to simu late wave propagation problems and compare the obtained wave forces between several inflow conditions and building shapes. Then, a debris model with a velocity was collided, and the collapse behavior of the building was simulated using the adaptively shifted integration (ASI)-Gauss code.