Tsunami Motion

This report is prepared in response to the Final Year Project required for undergraduate
students. The project is entitle "Tsunami Motion". Tsunami phenomenon and its
impacts on human life have attracted considerable attention after the latest Tsunami on
December 2004 hits Indonesia and neighboring ocean countries. Little knowledge is
available among civil engineers while they are the ones who should deal with major
consequences. The objective of this project is to develop a simple mathematical model
in order to determine tsunamis speed and height. A phrase has quoted "Scientists can
predict when a tsunami will arrive since the speed of the waves varies with the square
root of the water depth". Tsunami waves in the deep ocean can travel at high speeds for
long periods of time for distances of thousands of kilometres and lose very little energy
in the process. The deeper the water, the greater the speed of tsunami waves will be.
The height of a tsunami also depends upon the water depth. A tsunami that is just a
meter in height in the deep ocean can grow to tens of meters at the shoreline. Other
features which influence the size of a tsunami along the coast are the shoreline and
bathymetric configuration, the velocity of the sea floor deformation, the slope of the
basin and the efficiency which energy is transferred from the earth's crust to the water
column.