Tsunami Simulation

I worked with another student to model the behavior of a tsunami wave hitting a narrow fjord with a finite difference approximation of the 2D wave equation. The fjord was a long channel with tall cliff faces and variable depth which had the effect of increasing the wave's amplitude and varying its speed as it flowed over and around the shapes of rocks and reflected off the cliff walls.

We began by modeling the wave in 1 dimension with a smoothly decreasing depth. Decreasing depth of the water makes the wave travel faster at the top, which in reality causes it to "break" and tumble over itself. In our simulation it simply grows narrower at the top after starting as half of a sinusoidal wave.

This is a screenshot of the video we generated of the final 2D model.