Eldina Fatimah, Muhammad Fauzi, Iqra Mona Meilinda, Juellyan Iskandar, Abdullah Mahmud, Arisna Fauzia
Indonesia, characterized by a tropical climate and high rainfall, is highly susceptible to flooding. Such events frequently damage infrastructure and disrupt sanitation facilities, including conventional portable toilets, which cannot operate effectively when inundated. This study develops and validates a floating, portable toilet supported by foam-concrete pontoons for flood-prone communities. The method combines a component-based mass budget, buoyancy evaluation using Archimedes' principle, and small-angle static stability analysis about the x-axis using a two-pontoon model. The recalculated mass budget excludes unsupported residual loads. It uses only component masses explicitly stated in the manuscript: substructure (886.752 kg), superstructure (1883.470 kg), equipment and sanitation utilities (744.600 kg), full sludge load (1072.500 kg), and a four-user live load (260.000 kg). The resulting dry mass in Scenario I is 3514.822 kg, while the maximum operating mass in Scenario V is 4847.322 kg. Each pontoon has an external size of 0.8 × 3.6 × 1.0 m, and the analytical stability calculation uses the combined waterplane geometry of the two-pontoon system. Stability analysis across five load scenarios produced positive metacentric height (GM) values ranging from 0.222 m to 0.775 m. The gross buoyancy-to-load safety factor is 1.405, exceeding the minimum criterion of 1.2. These results indicate that the two-pontoon foam concrete system can provide a technically feasible calm-water foundation for floating portable toilets in flood-prone regions. At the same time, hydrodynamic effects from current, debris, wind, waves, and mooring constraints require further testing. ©2026 The authors.
Department of Civil Engineering, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, 23111, Indonesia; Doctoral Program, School of Engineering, Post Graduate Program, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, 23111, Indonesia; Department of Civil Engineering, Samudra University, Langsa, 24354, Indonesia
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