HR WALLINGFORD TSUNAMI GENERATION LABORATORY FACILITY

Wallingford’s specialist tsunami simulator, the largest in Europe, can generate various types of waves to support research into the understanding of tsunamis’ impact on urban areas.
The generator allows experts to investigate the effects that tsunamis have on coast defences, and how water is channelled around clusters of buildings. This provides the most accurate testing of the forces acting on buildings. The tsunami simulator can also be used to evaluate whether flood defences are effective against tsunamis.

The simulator is installed in a 75m long and 4m wide channel in HR Wallingford’s Fast Flow Facility in its modelling hall in Oxfordshire. It uses 70,000 litres of water to simulate either crest-led or trough-led tsunamis, at a scale of 1:50.

The unique feature of the tsunami simulator is that it can generate the full duration of a tsunami wave. A 20 minute wave, for instance, would be scaled to just under 3 minutes in the laboratory.

You can find more details on how the simulator works at: https://www.hrwallingford.com/facilities/tsunami-simulator