What are the similarities in the devastating structural damage caused by tsunamis, hurricanes and storm surges?
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Julie Young studies recent natural disasters, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, in an effort to provide understanding that will ultimately inform building guidelines and prevent the horrors from playing out again in the future. Much of the damage from all of these disasters, she has found, results from the potent interplay of multiple forces acting on buildings from all sides, including moving walls of water, extreme winds and shifting soils (see story, page 8). Young will next turn her attention to soil-structure systems along the Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington, where geologic conditions are primed for a massive combined earthquake-tsunami event. When the earth quakes, how does the soil respond? In an earthquake, soil often behaves like a liquid, according to Jean Prévost. For more than 20 years, the civil and environmental engineering professor has studied a phenomenon called “liquefaction
