Serious damage may occur to concrete hydraulic structures, such as water galleries, spillways, and stilling basins, due to the abrasive erosion caused by the presence of solid particles in the flow. This underlines the importance of being capable in providing characterization of the concrete from the point of view of its vulnerability to abrasive erosion, in order to improve the design of the structure and the material selection. Nevertheless, the existing apparatus for concrete abrasive erosion testing are either far from allowing realistic simulation of the actual environment in which this phenomenon occurs, or show a large degree of complexity and cost. An alternative method has been developed with the aid of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD was first employed to verify the effectiveness of a new laboratory equipment. Afterwards, a parameter has been introduced which, by successful comparison against preliminary experiments, proved suitable to quantify the effect of the fluid dynamic conditions on the concrete abrasive erosion, thereby opening the way to CFD-based customization of the apparatus. In the future, the synergy of numerical and physical modelling will allow developing predictive models for concrete erosion, making it possible to reliably simulate real structures.
Existence of piedmont zone in a river bed is a critical parameter from among numerous variations of topographical, geological and geographical conditions that can significantly influence the river flow scenario. Downstream flow situation assessed by routing of upstream hydrograph may yield higher flow depth if existence of such high infiltration zone is ignored and therefore it is a matter of concern for water resources planning and flood management. This work proposes a novel modified hydrodynamic model that has the potential to accurately determine the flow scenario in presence of piedmont zone. The model has been developed using unsteady free surface flow equations, coupled with Green-Ampt infiltration equation as governing equation. For solution of the governing equations Beam and Warming implicit finite difference scheme has been used. The proposed model was first validated from the field data of Trout Creek River showing excellent agreement. The validated model was then applied to a hypothetical river reach commensurate with the size of major tributaries of Brahmaputra Basin of India. Results indicated a 10% and 14% difference in the maximum value of discharge and depth hydrograph in presence and absence of piedmont zone respectively. Overall this model was successfully used to accurately predict the effect of piedmont zone on the unsteady flow in a river.
Calibration of parameters of mathematical models is still a tough task in several engineering problems. Many of the models adopted for the numerical simulations of real phenomena, in fact, are of empirical derivation. Therefore, they include parameters which have to be calibrated in order to correctly reproduce the physical evidence. Thus, the success of a numerical model application depends on the quality of the performed calibration, which can be of great complexity, especially if the number of parameters is higher than one. Calibration is traditionally performed by engineers and researchers through manual trial-and-error procedures. However, since models themselves are increasingly sophisticated, it seems more proper to look at more advanced calibration procedures. In this work, in particular, an optimization technique for a multi-parameter calibration is applied to a two-phase depth-averaged model, already adopted in previous works to simulate morphodynamic processes, such as, for example, the dike erosion by overtopping.
One of the most important problems faced in hydrology is the estimation of flood magnitudes and frequencies in ungauged basins. Hydrological regionalisation is used to transfer information from gauged watersheds to ungauged watersheds. However, to obtain reliable results, the watersheds involved must have a similar hydrological behaviour. In this study, two different clustering approaches are used and compared to identify the hydrologically homogeneous regions. Fuzzy C-Means algorithm (FCM), which is widely used for regionalisation studies, needs the calculation of cluster validity indices in order to determine the optimal number of clusters. Fuzzy Minimals algorithm (FM), which presents an advantage compared with others fuzzy clustering algorithms, does not need to know a priori the number of clusters, so cluster validity indices are not used. Regional homogeneity test based on L-moments approach is used to check homogeneity of regions identified by both cluster analysis approaches. The validation of the FM algorithm in deriving homogeneous regions for flood frequency analysis is illustrated through its application to data from the watersheds in Alto Genil (South Spain). According to the results, FM algorithm is recommended for identifying the hydrologically homogeneous regions for regional frequency analysis.