Hydrodynamic loadings of buildings in floods

Assessing the vulnerability of buildings in flood-prone areas is a key issue when evaluating the risk induced by flood events, particularly because of its proved direct influence on the loss of life during catastrophes. A comprehensive methodology for risk assessment of buildings subject to flooding is nevertheless still missing. Bearing this in mind, a new set of experiments have been performed at TU Delft with the aim of spreading more light on dynamics of flood-induced loads and their effects on buildings and to provide the CDF community with state of the art bench-marks. In this paper, a briefly overview is given of flood induced load on buildings; the new experimental work is then presented, together with results from preliminary analysis. Initial results suggest that use of existing prediction methods might be unsafe and that impulsive loading might be critical for both the assessment of the vulnerability of existing structures and the design of new flood-proof buildings.