Abstract. Flood hazards (flow depth and velocity) must be accurately assessed in high-risk areas during extreme flood events. However, the prediction of the very high flows is not an easy task due to the lack of field data and to the strong link between flow resistance and the land occupation of the floodplain. Confinement and inhomogeneity in lateral and longitudinal directions of hydraulic roughness strongly vary with return period T. The physical processes are complex, some still largely unexplored, and the assumptions linked to numerical modelling cannot be validated without field data. The FlowRes project (2015)(2016)(2017)(2018), funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), aims at improving the flood hazard assessment in floodplains in: 1) investigating in laboratory the hydrodynamic structure associated with extreme flood flows for various land occupations and flow discharge magnitudes; 2) assessing if the existing numerical modelling practices used for T ~ 100 years are still valid for extreme events with T > 1000 years, relying on the experimental data and on one field case. This paper reports some results obtained during the first year of the project.
There are no studies specifically aimed at characterizing and quantifying drag forces on finite cylinder arrays in the mixing layer of compound channel flows. Addressing this research gap, the current study is aimed at characterizing experimentally drag forces and drag coefficients on a square-cylinder array placed near the main-channel/floodplain interface, where a mixing layer develops. Testing conditions comprise two values of relative submergence of the floodplain and similar ranges of Froude and bulk Reynolds numbers. Time-averaged hydrodynamic drag forces are calculated from an integral analysis: the Reynolds-averaged integral momentum (RAIM) conservation equations are applied to a control volume to compute the drag force, with all other terms in the RAIM equations directly estimated from velocity or depth measurements. This investigation revealed that, for both tested conditions, the values of the array-averaged drag coefficient are smaller than those of cylinders in tandem or side by side. It is argued that momentum exchanges between the flow in the main channel and the flow in front of the array contributes to reduce the pressure difference on cylinders closer to the interface. The observed drag reduction does not scale with the normalized shear rate or the relative submersion. It is proposed that the value of the drag coefficient is inversely proportional to a Reynolds number based on the velocity difference between the main-channel and the array and on cylinder spacing.
Overbank flow in rivers threatens integrity of built elements located in the floodplain. Elements of infrastructure close to the interface between main channel and floodplain are subjected to complex hydrodynamic actions resulting from the obstruction of the shear flow that develops in that interface. In the current paper, the drag forces and the drag coefficient of building-like structures positioned in the interface are investigated. The experimental setup in Laboratorio Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) involves the placement of an array of square cylinders on the floodplain of a straight compound channel, next to the interface with the main channel. Three-component instantaneous-velocity recordings were performed by means of Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry (ADV) within the boundaries of a considered fluid-control volume encompassing the array, while uniform-flow conditions were established in the channel. The equation of momentum conservation was applied in its integral form in the fluid control-volume towards estimation of the time-averaged drag force at a certain elevation from the floodplain. The drag coefficient is estimated accounting for the typical shear layer at the main-channel/floodplain interface and is compared with coefficients strictly valid for isolated cylinders.
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