The transport of wood material in rivers has been the subject of various studies in recent years. Most research has focused on the ecological and geomorphologic role of wood, its recruitment processes and spatial distribution in streams. In this study, we focused on wood transport dynamics, and we have developed a numerical model to simulate wood transport coupled with a two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic model. For this purpose, wood drag forces were incorporated as additional source terms into the shallow water equations, which are solved together with wood transport by using the finite volume method. This new tool has been implemented as a computational module into 'Iber', a 2D hydraulic simulation software. The new module analyzes the initial motion threshold of wood based on the balance of forces involved in the wood's movement, and computes the position and velocity of differently shaped logs using a kinematic approach. The method also considers the interaction between the logs themselves and between the logs and the channel walls or boundaries.Flume experiments were used in a straight channel with obstructions to validate the model's capacity to accurately reproduce the movement of floating logs.

Large woody material (LWM) transported by rivers may be entrapped at critical stream geometry configurations (e.g. bridges) and therefore dramatically increase the destructive power of floods. This was the case in a Spanish mountain river where a flood event with a high degree of LWM transport took place in 1997. The aim of this study was to simulate a bridge clogging process and reconstruct the wood deposit patterns, modelling individual pieces of wood moving with the water flow and interacting among them and with the bridge. A two-dimensional numerical model was developed to simulate the transport of LWM and its effect on hydrodynamics. Different scenarios for the wood transport rate allowed us to study the influence of inlet boundary conditions on bridge clogging. For the studied event, the scenario which best reproduced the bridge clogging effect and flood characteristics was one in which 60% of the total wood entered before the peak discharge. This dropped to 30% at the peak itself, and finally fell to 10% during the recession curve. In addition, the accumulation patterns of LWM along the reach were computed and compared with post-event field photographs, showing that the model succeeded in predicting the deposition patterns of wood and those areas prone to form wood jams.

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ABSTRACT:The development of the roller compacted concrete as a technique of constructing dams and the stepped surface that results from the construction procedure opened a renewal interest in stepped spillways.Previous research has focused in studying the air-water flow down the stepped chute with objective of obtaining better design guidelines. The non aerated flow region enlarges as the flow rate increases and there is a lack of knowledge on the hydraulic performance of stepped spillways at high velocities that undermines its use in fear of cavitation damage. In the present study the developing flow region in a stepped channel with a slope 1v:0.8h is characterized using a particle image velocimetry technique. An expression for the growth of the boundary layer thickness is proposed based on the streamwise distance from the channel crest and the roughness height. The local flow resistance coefficient is calculated by application of the Von Karman's integral momentum equation.The shear strain, vorticity and swirling strength maps obtained from the mean velocity gradient tensor are presented. Also the fluctuating velocity field is assessed. The turbulent kinetic energy map indicates the region near the pseudo-bottom (imaginary line joining two adjacent step edges) as the most active in terms of Reynolds stresses. The turbulence was found to be very intense with maximum levels of turbulence intensity from 0.40 to 0.65 measured near the pseudo-bottom. Finally the quadrant analysis of the velocity fluctuations suggests the presence of strong outflows of fluid from the cavities as well as inflows into the cavities. It is conjectured that the mass transfer/exchange between cavities and main stream, play an important role in the high levels of turbulent energy observed.

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