Lattice Boltzmann method for simulating impulsive water waves generated by landslides

Impulsive water waves generated by landslides impose severe damage on coastal areas. Very large mass ows in the ocean can generate catastrophic tsunamis. Preventing damage to dams and coastal structures, and saving the lives of local people against landslide-generated waves, has become an increasingly important issue in recent years. Numerical modeling of landslide-generated waves is a challenging subject in CFD. The reason lies in the diculty of determining the interaction between the moving solids and sea water, which causes complicated turbulent regimes around the moving mass and at the water surface. Submarine or aerial types of landslide can further complicate the problem. Up to now, a number of numerical approaches have been proposed for predicting the behavior of ow during and after mass movement. In this study, a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) based-code is employed for analyzing and simulating the impulsive water waves generated by landslides. Four experimental cases of submerged and aerial landslides have been modeled to investigate the eciency and accuracy of the LBM code, and the obtained results are veried against experimental observations. The results indicate the capability of LBM in simulating complicated ow elds and demonstrate its superiority over numerical methods used so far, such as SPH and RANS.