The Force of Flooding

by John Clancy III

Submitted : Fall 2018

 In October of 2018, Hurricane Michael hit land in Gulf County, Florida, as the fourth strongest hurricane to devastate the United States of America (Klotzbach). The Subject Area Advisor of this project has a house on the coast of Gulf County and needs to prepare his house for Michael. Wind and flooding are the main causes of hurricane damage. His house has a basement, whose walls could be prone to collapsing from flooding. In this project force and pressure from the water on the interior walls of the basement will be calculated, to see if the walls need further work to prevent from collapsing. To find the force of water you must consider that force equals pressure multiplied by area. However, area and pressure changes as flooding increases, so the answer cannot be found by simply plugging in numbers. To figure out the total force you must take the integral of area multiplied by pressure. After integrating you can find the force and pressure on each wall. The SAA estimated that the walls of his basement can withstand around seven thousand pounds per square foot, from the water, before starting to deteriorate and collapse. Through the calculations in this project, it was found that the walls can withstand up to 6.8 feet of flooding before starting to collapse because of the force from the water. The force in each wall was then calculated at that point. The basement walls could also be exposed to more forces from wind and moving furniture, among other things, causing it to collapse. Since the flooding water by itself could cause a collapse, the proper precautions were taken to solidify the walls, prior to Hurricane Michael’s arrival.

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