PREDICTING RUN-UP OF BREAKING AND NONBREAKING LONG WAVES BY APPLYING THE CORNELL COMCOT MODEL

The present numerical and experimental study examines the performance of the Cornell COMCOT tsunami model developed under the direction of Professor Philip L.-F. Liu. The 2-D depth-averaged model was initially developed for nonbreaking wave run-up as it did not include all empirical term approximating the energy dissipation due to wave breaking. In this Study, numerical simulations based on the 2-D model of both breaking and nonbreaking wave run-up were performed. The results were then compared with the experimental results (Synolakis [1], Feng [2]) and also with the results based oil a more advanced depth-resolving RANS model for breaking waves developed by Lin et al. [3,4], with good agreement. An analysis of the numerical scheme used by COMCOT revealed that the truncation error has the similar effect as the empirical diffusion term typically used for simulating energy dissipation caused by wave breaking for depth-averaged models, thus eliminating the need to include this additional term in the COMCOT model. A verification of the COMCOT model against it historical tsunami event is also presented. The results show that the COMCOT model is a simple. yet effective model for predicting both breaking and nonbreaking wave run-up for practical applications.