Since the devastating hurricane seasons of 2004, 2005, and 2008, the stability
and serviceability of coastal bridges during and following hurricane events have become
a main public concern. Twenty coastal bridges, critical for hurricane evacuation and
recovery efforts, in Texas have been identified as vulnerable to hurricane surge and
wave action. To accurately assess extreme surges at these bridges, a dimensionless
surge response function methodology was adopted. The surge response function defines
maximum surge in terms of hurricane meteorological parameters such as hurricane size,
intensity, and landfall location. The advantage of this approach is that, given a limited
set of discrete hurricane surge data (either observed or simulated), all possible hurricane
surges within the meteorological parameter space may be described. In this thesis, we
will first present development of the surge response function methodology optimized to
include the influence of regional continental shelf geometry. We will then demonstrate
surge response function skill for surge prediction by comparing results with surge
observations for Hurricanes Carla (1961) and Ike (2008) at several stations along the coast. Finally, we apply the improved surge response function methodology to quantify
extreme surges for Texas coastal bridge probability and vulnerability assessment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7065 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Song, Youn Kyung |
| Contributors | Chang, Kuang-an, Irish, Jennifer L. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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