This is an old post saved for archival purposes only. The olaFoam project is now the olaFlow project

Today I would like to present an implementation of the pneumatic tsunami wave generator, a pressure-driven device that can generate very long waves and is especially good at simulating the initial phase that precedes a tsunami, in which water retreats from the shore. Check the video out:

As you can see, the leftmost deposit has a newly-developed boundary condition that induces a pressure gradient and drives the water. After propagation, the water level at the toe of the sloping section looks like this:

Afterwards, the water runs up the slope, passes over a flat section and reaches a deposit on the right hand side. We can also do an analysis on how overtopping looks like:

One of the drawbacks of this method is that long waves do not dissipate that easy and get reflected back both at the beach and at the wave generator. Having a flume long enough will minimize that undesired reflection effects during the time of interest. Another option would be connecting olaFoam’s active wave absorption at the leftmost boundary after the target wave has been generated, thus minimizing re-reflections. Since such long waves are within the shallow water regime, the effectivity of the boundary condition will be very high.

Stay tuned, you can expect new updates soon!