Simulated Water Depth Research Articles

Promoting precision surface irrigation through hydrodynamic modelling and microtopographic survey

Precision irrigation aims to deliver water and nutrients to crops at exactly the right time, in the right place and in the right amount. While surface irrigation is often perceived as less precise, accurate water distribution, wise use of resources and high efficiency can still be achieved with careful land preparation, astute irrigation management and rigorous performance monitoring. In this study, we advocate the innovative concept of Precision Surface Irrigation, centered around three key design and operational principles that are: well-organized field geometry (and microtopography), precise control of hydraulic-hydrological variables and, finally, regular performance evaluation. These pillars are then integrated into a simulation environment capable of capturing the intricacies of surface irrigation dynamics. Conducted in northern Italy's Padana plain, the study contrasts one-dimensional (WinSRFR) and two-dimensional (IrriSurf2D) irrigation dynamic modeling. Data collection includes boundary geometries, inflow rates, intervention durations, and microtopography, facilitating spatial performance assessment from both the models. The results show that the versatility of the two-dimensional modelling approach was able to reproduce well the observed water depths and the phases of water advance and depletion both in time and space within the studied border irrigation strips, even in complex situations where the strips were hydraulically connected. The RMSE between observed and simulated maximum water depth and waterfront advance time was less than 2.1 cm and 1.9 min, respectively. The two-dimensional approach was also able to detect the cross variability of irrigation dynamics, and to provide a spatial assessment of irrigation performance at high resolution. In conclusion, while the one-dimensional hydrodynamic approach to describing the hydraulic behavior of surface irrigation and field-scale irrigation performance remains valid, the two-dimensional approach provides, in our case study and reasonably elsewhere, a valid simulation environment for spatially characterizing irrigation dynamics in the context of Precision Surface Irrigation.

Surge irrigation modeling and scenario analyses for the best furrow irrigation management practices

Furrow irrigation with surge flow is a management strategy to improve irrigation performance compared to furrow irrigation with continuous flow. Successful management of surge irrigation corresponds to accurate field practices that depend on different flow hydraulic parameters that make it complex in practice. However, because of this complexity, very few surge infiltration models have been developed. So far, no study has been done to evaluate infiltration equations subject to different surge irrigation modelling concepts under field surge irrigation scenarios. This study investigates two surge infiltration equations of Modified Kostiakov-Lewies (MKL) and Branch Function (BF) using WinSRFR that is the only modelling tool to simulate surge irrigation by using two surge infiltration modelling concepts of Blair-Smerdon (BS) and Izuno-Podmore (IP). Field data were collected on different combinations of two furrow lengths (70 m and 90 m; open-end furrows), two inflow rates (0.4 l s−1 and 0.6 l s−1), and two cycle ratios (0.5 and 0.33). Field measurements confirmed that switching from continuous to surge irrigation significantly improved irrigation performance. Evaluation of the surge infiltration modeling concepts showed that IP had higher accuracy in simulating irrigation performance compared to BS. The MKL(IP) and BF(IP) had the highest accuracy in the simulation of advance time, infiltrated water depth, and runoff. Further analyses showed that decreasing the cycle ratio from 0.5 to 0.33 improved simulation accuracy in advance time, runoff, and irrigation performance, but it reduced the accuracy of simulated infiltrated water depth. Increasing the inflow rate from 0.4 l s−1 to 0.6 l s−1 decreased the accuracy of irrigation performance. However, field observations were only under a limited number of furrow lengths and inflow rates that might not be the best management field practices to increase irrigation performance. Scenario analyses were done to simulate irrigation performance under a combination of possible irrigation managements. The optimal irrigation scenario consisted of adjusting the different inflow rate (0.5–1.2 l s−1), furrow length (100–300 m), cutoff time (360–600 min), and on-time (20–60 min). Results show that using cutoff 360 min and on-time 60 min led to reducing deep percolation and runoff and increasing the distribution uniformity. Based on the scenario analyses for the most efficient irrigation performance in terms of irrigation efficiencies and water losses (runoff and deep percolation), the best irrigation management could be attributed to the furrow length of 200 m that occurs for on-time of 60 min, with a cutoff time of 360 min, and an inflow rate of 0.7 l s−1 although Zreq = 50 mm is not fully irrigated over the whole furrow. Under this scenario, 35 % of the furrow is under deficit irrigation. Scenario analyses showed that we may propose a new surge irrigation management named as “wet-cycle surge irrigation” such that the first surge completes the whole furrow length, and then the subsequent surges will run on wet soil.

A conceptual model for glacial lake bathymetric distribution

Abstract. The formation and expansion of glacial lakes worldwide due to global warming and glacier retreat have been well documented in the past few decades. Thousands of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) originating from moraine-dammed and ice-dammed lakes were reported, causing devastating impacts on downstream lives and properties. Detailed glacial lake bathymetry surveys are essential for accurate GLOF simulation and risk assessment. However, these bathymetry surveys are still scarce as glacial lakes located in remote and high-altitude environments hamper a comprehensive investigation. We developed a conceptual model for glacial lake bathymetric distribution using a semi-automatic simulation procedure. The basic idea is that the statistical glacial lake volume–area curves conform to a power-law relationship indicating that the idealized geometric shape of the glacial lake basin should be hemispheres or cones. First, by reviewing the evolution of various types of glacial lakes, we identified nine standard conceptual models to describe the shapes of lake basins. Second, we defined a general conceptual model to depict the continuum transitions between different standard conceptual models for those specific glacial lakes that lie between two standard conceptual models. Third, we nested the optimal conceptual model in the actual glacial lake basin to construct the water depth contours and interpolate the glacial lake bathymetric distribution. We applied the conceptual model to simulate six typical glacial lakes in the Third Pole with in situ bathymetric surveys to verify the algorithm's applicability. The results show a high consistency in the point-to-point comparisons of the measured and simulated water depths, with a total volume difference of approximately ±10 %. The conceptual model has significant implications for understanding glacial lake evolution and modeling GLOFs in the future.

Flood Estimation and Control in a Micro-Watershed Using GIS-Based Integrated Approach

Flood analyses when using a GIS-based integrated approach have been successfully applied around the world in large-sized watersheds. This study employed hydrological-hydraulic modeling to analyze flash floods by integrating HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS, and ArcGIS software for flood evaluation and control in a micro-watershed in the Samaru River, Nigeria. The watershed boundaries, its characteristics (soil and land use), the topographical survey, and the intensity duration frequency curve (IDF) of the study area were produced using data-driven techniques. The HEC-HMS model was used to derive the peak discharges for 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, and 200-year return periods with the frequency storm method. Afterward, the water surface profiles for the respective return periods were estimated using the HEC-RAS hydrodynamic model. The simulated design flood for the 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, and 200-year return periods at the reference location (the NUGA gate culvert) were 3.5, 6.8, 9.1, 12.1, 14.3, 16.6, and 19.0 m3/s, respectively, while those at the watershed outlet for the respective return periods were 7.5, 14.9, 20.3, 27.3, 32.6, 38.0, and 43.5 m3/s, respectively (with a water height of 0.9 m, 1.1 m, 1.3 m, 1.33 m, 1.38 m, 1.5 3m, and 1.8 m, respectively), at the NUGA gate culvert cross-section. The maximum water depths of about 0.9 m and 1.0 m were recorded in the right and left overbanks, which were similar to the simulated water depth for the 2- and 5-year return periods. Hence, for the smart control of floods passing through the river and major hydraulic structures, a minimum design height of 1.50 m is recommended. For the most economic trapezoidal channel section, a normal depth of 1.50 m, a bottom width of 1.73 m, a top width of 3.50 m, and a free board of 0.30 m is proposed to curb the overtopping of floods along the channel sub-sections. The findings of this study could help hydraulic engineers minimize flooding in streams and rivers overbanks in a micro-watershed.

STFS-urban: Spatio-temporal flood simulation model for urban areas

Amidst escalating urbanization and increasing extreme climatic events, strengthening flood resilience strategies in global cities has become imperative. This study introduces an innovative spatiotemporal urban flood simulation model that seamlessly integrates diverse refined and multi-spatiotemporal scales, ranging from 7.5 to 60 min and 100–2000 m, respectively. The model comprises multi-scale radar rainfall inversion (MRI), fine-grained coupled flood simulation model (FGCFS), and transformer-CNN flood prediction (TCFP) modules. Employing the Nanjing urban area as a case study, the model's efficacy is subjected to rigorous assessment. The advantages derived from integrated refinement coupling and boundary conditions through FGCFS and TCFP are accentuated. Impressively, the results underscore the robust performance of radar rainfall inversion across most scales, revealing a correlation coefficient surpassing 0.8 and a root-mean-square error of under 5.2 mm. FGCFS achieves optimal simulated water depth changes at 7.5 min × 500 m resolution, with the Nash efficiency coefficient exceeding 0.69 (0.94 at YS observation point and 0.89 at SXM observation point), alongside percentage deviations below 12.89 (3.59 at SXM observation point and 2.42 at XJL observation point). TCFP's learning proficiency is showcased through error convergence to 0.002 m after twenty iterations, particularly suitable for resolutions below 4 m. Notably, both FGCFS and TCFP demonstrate efficient utilization of resources, enabling streamlined simulations across varying data resolutions. Consequently, our study propels a sophisticated framework harmonizing multi-scale data integration, refinement coupling, and dynamic allocation. Our work extends beyond practical solutions, offering a glimpse into the future of flood simulation modeling, and reaffirming its pivotal role within the realm of environmental research and management.

Regimes hídricos no desenvolvimento de acessos do gênero Manihot

ABSTRACT The objective of this work was to select water deficittolerant accessions of the genus Manihot, through morphological characters under different water regimes. The experiment was conducted in a randomized block design, using a split-plot arrangement with plots consisting of tree water regimes (simulated rainfall and water depth of 100 and 20% crop evapotranspiration (ETc)), and subplots consisting of eight accessions of the genus Manihot (Gema-de-Ovo and Engana-Ladrão from the species M. esculenta Crantz, and BGMS-115, BGMS-110, BGMS-102, BGMS- 79, BGMS-24, and BGMS-48 from Manihot sp.). The accessions were evaluated considering two crop cycles: the first had 120 and 60 days from the application of the treatments. Plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves, leaf lobe length and shoot dry mass production were evaluated. For each cropping cycle, a split-plot analysis of variance was performed. The highest genotypic means were expressed by the accessions BGMS-115, BGMS-102, BGMS- 79 and BGMS-24 for most of the analyzed variables, regardless of the cultivation cycle. For the characteristic shoot dry mass production, accessions BGMS-102 and BGMS-79 showed the best performances under conditions of limited water regime (20% ETc), regardless of the cropping cycle. Accession BGMS-102 was also grouped in the group with the highest genotypic means, for this trait, in treatments with rain simulation and 100% ETc, in the first cycle, demonstrating that, under stress conditions, this accession is an option to tolerate low water precipitation and responds well when higher precipitation occurs.

Sensitivity of fish habitat suitability to multi-resolution hydraulic modeling and field-based description of meso-scale river habitats

In-stream habitat models at the meso-scale are increasingly used to quantify the effects of hydro-morphological pressures in rivers. The spatial distributions of water depth and velocity represent key attributes of physical habitat. Choosing between field surveys, hydraulic modeling or their integration is made depending on available tools, technical skills, budget and time. However, the sensitivity to such choices of estimated habitat conditions suitable for biological organisms, such as fish, is poorly known.In this study, three commonly used approaches in hydraulic-habitat modeling were compared and tested on a mountain stream, the Mareta River (NE Italy). Two approaches were based on 2D hydraulic modeling, calculated on computational meshes with varying resolution and quality: (1) high-resolution meshes derived from topographical data obtained from Airborne Bathymetric LiDAR; (2) a mesh extrapolated from topographical cross-sectional profiles. The third approach (3) was based on in-stream surveys. From these, suitable channel-area for two fish species, the marble trout (juvenile and adult), and the European bullhead (adult), were estimated.Results showed that decreasing mesh resolution and quality affects the simulated water depth and velocity distributions, both in terms of their average and their standard deviation. The largest differences were found for the in-stream survey-based results. Morphologically complex unit types, such as steps, rapids and pools were more sensitive than simpler mesohabitats, such as glides and riffles. The most sensitive hydro-morphological unit types to the chosen approach were backwaters, glides being the least sensitive, also in terms of their suitability as mesohabitats. Despite that, a key finding is that errors are minimized when deriving habitat - streamflow rating curves at the reach scale, for which all approaches were largely able to reproduce the main characteristics of the curve, i.e. maxima, minima and inflection points.

Bare-earth DEM generation from ArcticDEM and its use in flood simulation

Abstract. In urban areas, topography data without above-ground objects are typically preferred in wide-area flood simulation but are not yet available for many locations globally. High-resolution satellite photogrammetric DEMs, like ArcticDEM, are now emerging and could prove extremely useful for global urban flood modelling; however, approaches to generate bare-earth DEMs from them have not yet been fully investigated. In this paper, we test the use of two morphological filters (simple morphological filter – SMRF – and progressive morphological filter – PMF) to remove surface artefacts from ArcticDEM using the city of Helsinki (192 km2) as a case study. The optimal filter is selected and used to generate a bare-earth version of ArcticDEM. Using a lidar digital terrain model (DTM) as a benchmark, the elevation error and flooding simulation performance for a pluvial scenario were then evaluated at 2 and 10 m spatial resolution, respectively. The SMRF was found to be more effective at removing artefacts than PMF over a broad parameter range. For the optimal ArcticDEM-SMRF the elevation RMSE was reduced by up to 70 % over the uncorrected DEM, achieving a final value of 1.02 m. The simulated water depth error was reduced to 0.3 m, which is comparable to typical model errors using lidar DTM data. This paper indicates that the SMRF can be directly applied to generate a bare-earth version of ArcticDEM in urban environments, although caution should be exercised for areas with densely packed buildings or vegetation. The results imply that where lidar DTMs do not exist, widely available high-resolution satellite photogrammetric DEMs could be used instead.

MESH-IN: A MESHed INlet offline coupling method for 3-D extreme hydrodynamic events in DualSPHysics

Extreme hydrodynamic events, such as those driven by tsunamis, have a significant impact on coastal environments. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics computational method gained popularity in modelling these phenomena. However, high resolution is needed in areas of interest, making coupling techniques popular to reduce computational costs. Herein, a new two-step offline coupling method was developed and validated in DualSPHysics. In step 1, the simulated velocity field and water depth are measured over a two-dimensional meshed surface of a generating domain. In step 2, the interpolated flow variables are used as boundary conditions in a receiving domain with equal or higher resolution. The method was validated by using two different laboratory experiments that are representative of tsunami propagation and inundation inland. The results show a reduction of computational time of up to 17.6 times, with decreasing savings for increasing resolution in the receiving domain. The validation tests showed that the developed method allows to simulate flows in the receiving domains at nearly the same accuracy of the generating domain while also decreasing computational time. When including debris transport, improvements in accuracy occur when doubling the resolution of the receiving domain with respect to the generating domain.

City Flood Disaster Scenario Simulation Based on 1D–2D Coupled Rain–Flood Model

In order to realize the reproduction and simulation of urban rainstorm and waterlogging scenarios with complex underlying surfaces, based on the 1D–2D coupled models, we constructed an urban storm–flood coupling model considering one-dimensional river channels, two-dimensional ground and underground pipe networks. Luoyang City, located in the western part of Henan Province, China was used as a pilot to realize the construction of a one-dimensional and two-dimensional coupled urban flood model and flood simulation. The coupled model was calibrated and verified by the submerged water depths of 16 survey points in two historical storms flood events. The average relative error of the calibration simulated water depth was 22.65%, and the average absolute error was 13.93 cm; the average relative error of the verified simulated water depth was 15.27%, the average absolute error was 7.54 cm, and the simulation result was good. Finally, 28 rains with different return periods and different durations were designed to simulate and analyze the rainstorm inundation in the downtown area of Luoyang. The result shows that the R2 of rainfall and urban rainstorm inundation is 0.8776, and the R2 of rainfall duration and urban rainstorm inundation is 0.8141. The study results have important practical significance for urban flood prevention, disaster reduction and traffic emergency management.

Impacts of Vegetation Removal on Urban Mediterranean Stream Hydrology and Hydraulics

Given the widespread presence of non-native vegetation in urban and Mediterranean watersheds, it is important to evaluate how these sensitive ecosystems will respond to activities to manage and restore native vegetation conditions. This research focuses on Del Cerro, a tributary of the San Diego River in California, where non-native vegetation dominates the riparian zone, creating flooding and fire hazards. Field data were collected in 2018 to 2021 and consisted of water depth, streamflow, and stream temperature. Our data set also captured baseline conditions in the floodplain before and after the removal of burned non-native vegetation in November 2020. Observed changes in hydrologic and geomorphic conditions were used to parameterize and calibrate a two-dimensional hydraulic model to simulate urban floodplain hydraulics after vegetation removal. We utilized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Hydrologic Engineering Center River Assessment System (HEC-RAS) model to simulate the influence of canopy loss and vegetation disturbance and to assess the impacts of vegetation removal on stream restoration. We simulated streamflow, water depth, and flood extent for two scenarios: (1) 2019; pre-restoration where non-native vegetation dominated the riparian area, and (2) 2021; post-restoration following the removal of non-native vegetation and canopy. Flooding after restoration in 2021 was more frequent compared to 2019. We also observed similar flood extents and peak streamflow for storm events that accumulated half the amount of precipitation as pre-restoration conditions. Our results provide insight into the responses of small urban stream reaches to the removal of invasive vegetation and canopy cover.

Effects of Microtopography on Runoff Generation in Plain Farmland: New Insights from an Event-Based Rainfall–Runoff Model

Plain farmland areas without significant topographic slope exhibit microtopographic features of different scales. Quantitative assessment of the effects of microtopography at different scales on runoff generation in typical farmland areas is of great significance for regional water resources management and flood disaster forecasting. The main objective of the study was to develop an event-based rainfall–runoff model based on the layered Green–Ampt model (LGAM) with the consideration of plot-scale microtopographic features in plain farmland areas. Our experimental field, located in Taihu Lake Basin, was classified into three types of topographic subunits (i.e., main field, rill, and ditch) according to the average elevation. To simplify the concentration process for three topographic subunits, the average concentration time method was employed. Here, various experimental scenarios were simulated, including two classical unsteady rainfall events in homogeneous soil, one ponding infiltration experiment, and two typical rainfall–runoff events in the experimental field. We found that the multilayered setting showed higher accuracy than the homogeneous setting for simulating infiltration in the ponding infiltration experiment in the field. The RMSE of simulated ponding water depth reduced from 0.166 cm to 0.035 cm and NSE rose from 0.988 to 0.999. The simulated hydrograph considering microtopography effects proved higher accuracy than that under unified topography assumption. After classifying topography, the RMSE and NSE of simulated hydrographs decreased and increased, respectively. The lower the topographic subunit, the earlier the outflow occurred. At the early stage, the runoff mostly originated from the relatively low topographic subunits. Infiltration-excess regime under saturated condition may initially dominate in the low-lying ditch under intense rainfall, with extremely high runoff coefficient. Concentration process in the plain farmland area was affected by both rainfall intensity and microtopography. The greater the rainfall intensity, the shorter the average concentration time. The concentration velocity under heavy rainfall was four times faster than that under light rainfall. The lower topographic subunit was characterized by shorter concentration pathway and average concentration time. Ditches reduced the peak flow and advanced the time to peak. This quantitative study provides new insights into effects of microtopography on runoff generation in plain farmland area as well as an effective alternative for plot-scale rainfall–runoff modeling.

Determination of Crop Water Requirements and Irrigation Scheduling of Wheat Using Cropwat at Koga and Rib Irrigation Scheme, Ethiopia

: Population growth, high water competition, and the effect of climate change have caused water shortage problems in the Nile basin, Ethiopia. Proper water management improves water efficiency and determining the water requirement of field crops are options for improving water productivity. In this study, the CROPWAT 8.0 model, local climate, and soil data were used to determine crop water requirement (CWR) and irrigation scheduling of wheat at Koga and Rib irrigation scheme, Nile basin. The Penman-Monteith and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) soil conservation service methods were used to compute the reference evapotranspiration (ETo) and effective rainfall. Five levels of water depth (50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, and 150%) of the model and two irrigation intervals (14 and 21 days) were arranged in a Randomized Completely Block Design. The Koga, irrigating 75% of CROPWAT simulated water depth (9.3 , 22.9 , 44.1 and 25.8 mm at initial, development, middle and late-stage respectively) gave 3.37 t ha wheat yield and 1.01 kg m water productivity. The result at Rib showed that -1 -3 irrigating 75% of the model (9.1, 23.6, 47.2, and 34.2 mm at initial, development, middle, late-stage, respectively) gave 4.27 t ha yield and 1.81 -1kg m water productivity of wheat. The reference evapotranspiration varied from 4.86 to 3.14 mm day at Koga and from 4.67 to 2.36 mm day -3 -1 -1at Rib scheme. The irrigation requirement of wheat at Koga was 376.9 mm dec while at Rib was 379.9 mm dec . The CROPWAT model is an -1 -1important tool to compute the crop water requirement of field crops in irrigated agriculture.

A study on spatial variation of water flow at confluence connected to non-orthogonal channels

Most studies on the flood flow characteristics at a confluence focus on channels connected orthogonally or at right angle, but studies on non-orthogonally connected channels remain limited. In this study, hydraulic-model experiments and numerical simulations are conducted to analyze the spatial variation of water flow in and around a confluence connected to non-orthogonal channels. Comparison of the measured and simulated water depth distributions in and around the confluence indicates that the results are in relatively good agreement. In the experiment where the angle between two upstream channels is 45°, the water flow pattern in and around the confluence corresponds approximately to Type I proposed by (Mignot et al. J Hydraul Res 46:723–738, 2008). However, it was found that there is no any flow type to correspond to the water flow pattern measured in the case of the angle of 135°. For analyzing the variation of the water depth in and around the confluence with inflow, numerical simulation is performed by setting the inflow ratio of the two inlet channels to one, three, and six, respectively.

Pluvial flooding: High-resolution stochastic hazard mapping in urban areas by using fast-processing DEM-based algorithms

Climate change and rapid expansion of urban areas are expected to increase pluvial flood hazard and risk in the near future, and particularly so in large developed areas and cities. Therefore, large-scale and high-resolution pluvial flood hazard mapping is required to identify hotspots where mitigation measures may be applied to reduce flood risk. Depressions or low points in urban areas where runoff volumes can be stored are prone to pluvial flooding. The standard approach based on estimating synthetic design hyetographs assumes, in a given depression, that the T-year design storm generates the T-year pluvial flood. In addition, urban areas usually include several depressions even linked or nested that would require distinct design hyetographs instead of using a unique synthetic design storm. In this paper, a stochastic methodology is proposed to address the limitations of this standard approach, developing large-scale ∼ 2 m-resolution pluvial flood hazard maps in urban areas with multiple depressions. The authors present an application of the proposed approach to the city of Pamplona in Spain (68.26 km2). The Safer_RAIN fast-processing algorithm based on digital elevation models (DEMs) is compared with the IBER 2D hydrodynamic model in four real storms by using 10-min precipitation fields. Precipitation recorded at rainfall-gauging stations was merged with continuous fields obtained from a meteorological radar station. Given the hydrostatic limitations of Safer_RAIN, the benchmarking results are adequate in terms of water depths in depressions. A long set of 10 000 synthetic storms that maintain the statistical properties of observations in Pamplona is generated. Safer_RAIN is used to simulate runoff response, and filling and spilling processes, in depressions for the 10 000 synthetic storms, obtaining the probability distribution of water depths in each cell. Maps of pluvial flood hazards are developed in the Pamplona metropolitan area for 10 return periods in the range from two to 500 years from such pixel-based series of simulated water depths. Bivariate return-period curves are estimated in a set of cells, showing that several storms can generate a given T-year pluvial flood with an increasing precipitation with storm duration that depends on the draining catchment soil characteristics. The methodology proposed is useful to develop maps of pluvial flood hazards in large multi-depression urban areas in reasonable computation times, identifying the main pluvial flood hotspots.

Induction Heating in Underwater Wet Welding-Thermal Input, Microstructure and Diffusible Hydrogen Content.

Hydrogen-assisted cracking is a major challenge in underwater wet welding of high-strength steels with a carbon equivalent larger than 0.4 wt%. In dry welding processes, post-weld heat treatment can reduce the hardness in the heat-affected zone while simultaneously lowering the diffusible hydrogen concentration in the weldment. However, common heat treatments known from atmospheric welding under dry conditions are non-applicable in the wet environment. Induction heating could make a difference since the heat is generated directly in the workpiece. In the present study, the thermal input by using a commercial induction heating system under water was characterized first. Then, the effect of an additional induction heating was examined with respect to the resulting microstructure of weldments on structural steels with different strength and composition. Moreover, the diffusible hydrogen content in weld metal was analyzed by the carrier gas hot extraction method. Post-weld induction heating could reduce the diffusible hydrogen content by −34% in 30 m simulated water depth.

The impact of water supplement on habitat suitability for breeding red-crowned cranes

With the increasing influence of climate change and human activities, water shortage in wetlands is becoming an urgent problem. In order to maintain waterfowl habitat and prevent wetland degradation, water management strategies have been implemented for many wetland reserves. However, there is often uncertainty concerning optimal water supply amount, especially during the breeding periods of endangered waterfowls. In this study, the MIKE 21 hydrodynamic model was used to simulate the impact of different water supply amounts on water depths in the Zhalong wetlands, China. The simulated water depths were utilized to evaluate the area of suitable habitat for breeding red-crowned cranes (Grus japonensis) based on the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) niche model. The optimal water supply amount was determined by maximizing the extent of suitable breeding red-crowned cranes habitat. Results suggest that for the Zhalong wetlands, water depth is the key habitat feature which determines the variability of suitable habitat extent. The optimal water supply amount for the Zhalong wetlands in 2014 was 1.13 × 108 m3, producing a suitable breeding habitat area of 237.25 km2 at the end of the water supply period, 50% greater than the suitable habitat extent with the existing water supplement scenario. The proposed method, combining a hydrodynamic model with the MaxEnt niche model, has the potential to determine optimal water supply amount to any semi-closed floodplain. The results of the current study can not only provide an evidence base for wetland water management, but also provide a scientific basis for the study of wetland eco-hydrological processes and their impact on wetland biological diversity conservation.

Tackling random fields non-linearities with unsupervised clustering of polynomial chaos expansion in latent space: application to global sensitivity analysis of river flooding

A surrogate model is developed to accurately approximate a two-dimensional hydrodynamics numerical solver in order to conduct a reduced-cost variance-based global sensitivity analysis of the hydraulic state. The impact of uncertainties in river bottom friction and boundary conditions on the simulated water depth is analyzed for quasi-unsteady flows. An autoencoder technique adapted to non-linear variable dimension reduction is used to reduce the multi-dimensional model output so that the formulation of the surrogate remains computationally parsimonious. In addition, following the divide-and-conquer principle, a mixture of local polynomial chaos expansions is proposed to deal with non-linearity in the hydraulic state with respect to uncertain inputs. Machine learning techniques are used to automatically partition the input space into clusters that are not affected by non-linearities and support accurate surrogates. This combined strategy is applied to a reach of the Garonne River where river and floodplains dynamics are simulated by the numerical solver Telemac-2D. The merits of this strategy are highlighted when the flood front reaches regions where the topography features a strong gradient and where, consequently, strong non-linearities occur between the water depth and friction as well as hydrologic input forcing. By applying this strategy, the Q_2 metric improves by 90% compared to a classical polynomial chaos expansion surrogate, resulting in a much more reliable sensitivity analysis. This is particularly important in floodplain areas where human and economic activities are at stake.

Experimental and numerical investigation of water-surface characteristics at crossing connected non-orthogonally to four flat channels

Abstract Most studies on the flood flow characteristics at a crossing focus on channels connected orthogonally or at right angle, but studies on non-orthogonally connected channels remain limited. In this study, hydraulic-model experiments and numerical simulations are performed to analyze the characteristics of the water-surface variation in and around a crossing connected non-orthogonally to four flat channels. Comparison of the measured and simulated water depth distributions in and around the crossing indicates that the results are in relatively good agreement. In the experiment where the angle between two upstream channels is 45°, the water flow pattern in and around the crossing corresponds approximately to Type I proposed by Mignot et al. (2008). However, it was found that there is no any flow type to correspond to the water flow pattern measured in the case of the angle of 135°. For analyzing the variation of the water depth in and around the crossing with inflow, numerical simulation is performed by setting the inflow ratio of the two inlet channels to one, three, and six, respectively.

Numerical Analysis of Free-Surface Flows over Rubber Dams

This study integrates a large eddy simulation (LES) model and volume of fluid (VOF) method to simulate the free-surface flows over inflexible circular-crested dams of different shapes. The simulated water depths and pressures on the dam surface are validated by the results of laboratory experiments. Then the numerical model examines the effects of the water depths and the Reynolds number on the hydrodynamic force and the discharge coefficient. The simulation results reveal that the time-averaged drag coefficient decreases as the downstream water depth H2 increases, while the influence of water depth H2 on the lift coefficients is less significant. Furthermore, the discharge coefficients of circular and elliptical dams, computed from the simulated velocity profiles over the crest of the dam, agree with the formulae suggested by previous studies when the downstream depth H2/H1 < 0.90. In contrast, the discharge coefficient of a tear-shape dam is slightly larger than those of circular dams.