Spatial impulse waves: wave height decay experiments at laboratory scale

Abstract

Impulse waves generated by rapid subaerial landslides into water bodies may pose a threat to riparian settlements and infrastructure. Empirically derived prediction equations based on experiments at laboratory scale provide information on key wave characteristics for preliminary hazard assessment. This research discusses existing prediction methods for spatial wave propagation features and compares their results with own impulse wave height decay experiments. While some prediction methods are based on simplified approaches for wave generation such as rigid body slides, others take only limited sets of slide parameters into account, narrowing their range of applicability considerably. The prediction methods are intentionally applied outside their ranges of applicability with the aim to assess their characteristics on an extended parameter range. It is found that a combination of separate terms for wave generation and wave propagation from two different existing prediction methods provides the best representation of the experimental data.