Tsunami Debris Motion and Loads in a Scaled Port Setting: Comparative Analysis Data for the Material Point Method

Data repository for "Tsunami debris motion and loads in a scaled port setting: Comparative analysis of three state-of-the-art numerical methods against experiments" by Bonus et al. 2025:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2024.104672

Repository includes scaled, 3D tsunami debris simulation results in three numerical methods: the Material Point Method (MPM, ClaymoreUW), Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH, DualSPHysics), and Eulerian grid-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD, Simcenter STAR-CCM+). This data repository contains results on the long wave generation from a vacuum-controlled tsunami wave maker, longitudinal displacement of debris forward and back, lateral spreading angle of debris, interactions of stacked debris, and impact forces measured with debris accelerometers and/or obstacle load-cells for the digital flume models of each respective numerical method.

The comparative analysis is done for a benchmark set at 1:40 Froude scale to model experiments of shipping containers mobilized into and amidst a port setting with simplified and generic structures, closely related to the seminal Tohoku 2011 tsunami case histories which majorly affected seaports. A wave flume at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, hosted the experiments as reported by Goseberg et al. 2016 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2016.08.012). Across dozens of trials, an elongated vacuum-chamber wave surges and spills over a generic harbor apron, mobilizing 3–6 hollow debris-modeling sea containers-, in 1–2 vertical layers against friction. One to two rows of 5 square obstacles are placed upstream or downstream of the debris, with widths and gaps of 0.66x and 2.2x of debris length, respectively.

The data repository is intended for inclusion in further comparative analysis efforts that study the efficacy of numerical methods and software for tsunami debris modeling.