Prediction of Hydrodynamic Vulnerability of Coastal Bridges to Extreme Storm Surges

由于2004年伊万飓风和2005年卡特里娜飓风期间的海浪激增，几座关键桥梁遭到严重破坏。2011年飓风艾琳和2012年桑迪飓风对纽约市大都会地区已建基础设施的破坏表明，关键的沿海桥梁存在潜在风险。由于海平面上升和气候变化的影响，这种风险在未来的飓风中可能会更高。S：这个项目更广泛的意义和重要性在于开发了一个计算框架，用于预测桥梁在未来飓风期间对极端风暴潮的脆弱性，并制定了减少这些脆弱性的设计指南。该项目成果的成功应用将有助于提高桥梁基础设施对极端风暴潮的适应能力和弹性。该项目的教育和推广影响是，代表不足的女学生有机会参与多学科研究，对新出现的问题进行数学和计算机模拟，并为工程师提供关于气候变化对已建基础设施影响的知识。拟议研究的目的是调查未来飓风期间极端风暴潮对桥梁的水动力影响。该项目的范围包括风暴潮的计算模拟，包括大尺度河口流动和风暴潮对桥梁影响的计算流体力学模拟。由于飓风桑迪期间的风暴潮数据以及复杂的海岸线和水深测量，将选择纽约市港口易受攻击的桥梁进行演示。计算框架的可靠性将通过与(I)飓风桑迪期间观测到的风暴潮和(Ii)使用海啸发生器在小规模实验中模拟的风暴潮进行比较来证明。拟议的研究涉及模拟与100公里尺度的公海风暴潮的演变有关的多尺度和多物理过程，以及风暴潮向沿海港口的传播和向小于1米尺度的桥梁部件的力转移。

Several critical bridges were damaged severely because of wave surges during Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Damage to the built infrastructure during Hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 in the New York City Metropolitan area shows the potential risk to critical coastal bridges. This risk could be higher in the future hurricanes because of sea level rise and climate change effects. This project?s broader significance and importance are the development of a computational framework for the prediction of vulnerability of bridges to extreme storm surges during future hurricanes and the development of design guidelines for reducing these vulnerabilities. Successful application of outcome of this project will help improve the adaptability and resilience of bridge infrastructure with respect to extreme storm surges. Educational and outreach impacts of the project are opportunities for underrepresented and women students to participate in multidisciplinary research on mathematical and computer modeling of emerging problems and knowledge for engineers on effects of climate change on built infrastructure.The objective of the proposed research is to investigate hydrodynamic impacts on bridges due to extreme storm surges during future hurricanes. The scope of this project includes computational modeling of storm surges including large-scale estuary flows and computational fluid dynamics simulation of impact of storm surge on bridges. Vulnerable bridges in the New York City harbor will be selected for demonstration because of the availability of storm surge data during Hurricane Sandy and complex coastlines and bathymetry. Reliability of the computational framework will be demonstrated through comparison with (i) storm surges observed during the Hurricane Sandy and (ii) storm surges simulated in small scale experiments using tsunami generator. The proposed research involves simulation of multi-scale and multi-physics processes related to the evolution of storm surge in the open sea at scales of 100 km and propagation of the surge to the coastal harbor and transfer of forces to bridge components at scales less than 1 m.