Recent natural disasters around the world including
both tsunamis and hurricanes, have highlighted the inability
of wood buildings to withstand wave and surge
loading during these extreme events. Little is known
about the interaction between coastal residential light-frame
wood buildings and wave and surge loading because
often little is left of the buildings. This leaves
minimal opportunity for forensic investigations. This
paper summarizes the results of a study whose objective
was to begin to better understand the interaction
between North American style residential structures
and wave loading. To do this, one-sixth scale residential
building models typical of North American coastal
construction, were subjected to tsunami wave bores
generated from waves of heights varying from 10 cm
to 60 cm. The lateral force produced by the wave bores
were, as expected, found to vary nonlinearly with parent
wave height.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by Fuji Technology Press. The published article can be found at: http://www.fujipress.jp/JDR/.Keywords: hurricane, residential building, light-frame wood, tsunami, bore, wav
