Floating tree trunks, shipping containers, and other debris swept up in floods can jam against bridges and culverts, turning them into dams that worsen flooding upstream. Current flood models largely ignore this debris, meaning they underestimate water levels and the risk of structural damage. Researchers at Newcastle University are building a new computer model that tracks how individual pieces of debris move through channels and interact with hydraulic structures. They will test the model against real-world experiments in a 12-metre-long laboratory flume, using a technique called the Discrete Element Method that treats each log or crate as a separate particle with its own contact forces. If successful, the model will let engineers predict where debris is likely to accumulate during a flood and design bridges, weirs, and flood defences that can withstand or deflect it. This is applied engineering research with a direct practical goal: improving the accuracy of flood risk maps and infrastructure design standards. The work does not aim to uncover fundamental physical principles, but to give planners and insurers a tool that accounts for a major source of flood damage that current models miss.
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Numerical hydrodynamic models have recently been developed at Newcastle University (Mckenna et al, 2023a, 2023b) to represent the effects of gates and bridges in a 2D modelling framework. Within this project these models will be further enhanced and validated for a range of realistic structures and geometries, providing new tools that can be used to investigate and model flow and flood behaviour for a wide range of practical problems. The capability for modelling such 3D fluid-structure interaction in an essentially 2D hydrodynamic modelling framework (Glenis et al, 2018) is expected to have significant impact in practical engineering application as well as academic developments. Floating debris in flood modelling is an important factor to consider. It can cause blockages in waterways, leading to increased water levels and flooding. It can also cause damage to structures such as bridges and culverts, which can further exacerbate flooding. In addition, floating debris can cause changes in flow characteristics, which can affect the accuracy of hydraulic models used for flood risk management. The aim of this project is to develop a coupled multi-layer shallow water and floating debris modelling system to investigate the transport dynamics of debris and the impact on hydraulic structures. This project will combine physical scale modelling with numerical modelling to investigate floating debris and fluid-debris-structure interactions in channels. Physical modelling will be carried out in the Vedrana Kutija flume at Newcastle University, a state-of-the-art fully instrumented, 1m wide x 12m long flume. The floating debris model will be based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) (Cundall & Strack, 1980). It is based on the concept of treating individual particles as discrete elements that interact with each other through contact forces. More recently it has been used to model floating debris in rivers (Amicarelli et al., 2015; Stockstill et al., 2009).
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