In recent years, tsunami attacks on coastal infrastructures have repeatedly occurred around the oceans' seaboard. Some of these attacks led to the highest toll of casualties in human history and massive economic devastation in many countries. In spite of tsunamis being documented during this past century, few building codes and engineering guidelines make provisions for tsunami design loads, and, at best, mention some limited instructions for that purpose. Latest tsunami disasters motivated engineers and researchers to investigate tsunami wave effects on onshore structures and to propose appropriate formulas to estimate tsunami loads (Sakura et al. 2002, Dias et al 2005, Yeh 2006, Robertson 2005, Palermo et al. 2008, Nistor et al. 2010, and Nouri et al. 2010). In this study, a large-scale model was fabricated and equipped with pressure transducers, water level sensors, an accelerometer, a model lateral displacement transducer (LVDT) and a high frequency six degree of freedom load cell. The model was tested in a High Discharge Flume at the Canadian Hydraulics Centre. The model structure was subjected to hydraulic bores similar to the ones occurring as a result of rapidly advancing broken tsunami waves. These hydraulic bores were generated by the rapid release of a large volume of water that was impounded behind a swing gate. Three water impoundment depths were used: 550, 850, and 1150 mm. Regular and high speed video cameras were used to capture the bore-structure interaction. The pressure distribution around the models was recorded and analyzed in correlation with their corresponding inundation heights and the total net force on the structure was also measured using a dynamometer. The large amount of collected data was further analyzed and discussed.
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