Abstract
Wood transport during flood events can increase inundation risk and should be included in numerical models to estimate the associated residual risk. This paper presents the application of a fully Eulerian model that considers floating wood as a passive superficial pollutant through the adaptation of the advection–diffusion equation. A set of experiments is performed in a sinusoidal flume with a contraction to model semi-congested wood transport. The variation of the log release position replicates the possible variability of large wood entrainment during real events. The experiments are used to validate the numerical model, providing a comparison of the wood mass transport. Different release modes are also tested. The model predicts the position of the released logs and the overall transported mass, independently of the release position and modes, with an accuracy that varies along the flume length and across the flume axis. The analysis of the experimental and numerical transport velocity shows that modulation of the transport velocity is needed to ensure adequate model performances for semi-congested conditions.
Highlights
River engineers and flood modelers shall provide an adequate response to the natural phenomena that threaten citizens’ safety along rivers
The results show that the Eulerian numerical model tends to underestimate the wood mass in the left-side target areas by distributing the wood mass in the right-side areas
To assess if this depends on the proposed Eulerian model, a simulation of one test with dtr = (−40, 0, 40) is performed with the Eulerian–Lagrangian model ORSA2D_WT to provide a comparison, as such models are considered as a benchmark in the literature when dealing with large wood transport
Summary
River engineers and flood modelers shall provide an adequate response to the natural phenomena that threaten citizens’ safety along rivers. Flood risk mitigation measures rely on the prediction of the effects related to events with certain return periods but can be invalidated or weakened if unexpected factors arise, such as the transport of large amounts of wood debris during floods. The gathering of large wood at in-line structures increases the hydraulic risk and leads to possible structural failure due to the combination of water pressure and local scouring [7,8]. The occurrence of such events in the last decade highlights the need to update flood mitigation measures to cope with the residual risk connected to large wood transport
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