The Dupuy catchment (Laferrere, Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires) has suffered numerous floods in recent years. The frequency and magnitude of these events, coupled with the large number of people affected, has led to some community representatives organising themselves to collect flood records, increase awareness of the problem and push for solutions and mitigating actions. That campaign inspired the study of the flooding dynamics of the catchment, with the aim of developing simple tools for risk mitigation. To analyse the water dynamics in the catchment, a high‐resolution urban numerical model was implemented with the EPA‐SWMM software. Due to the lack of systematic observations of flow variables, the model was validated using data collected by the affected community itself. More than 500 simulations of different synthetic storms were run on a high‐performance computational cluster and analysed. These processed results, coupled with the observation of rainfall intensities during an event, may be used by the community and risk managers to reduce exposure and mitigate flood risk.
Se describe y valida el sistema de modelación construido para diseñar el sistema hidráulico de llenado/ vaciado del Tercer Juego de Esclusas del Canal de Panamá. El sistema de modelación está constituido por una serie de modelos numéricos de cero, una, dos y tres dimensiones espaciales, y un modelo físico. Se analiza su aplicación para seleccionar y optimizar el diseño de los componentes no estándar del sistema hidráulico, determinar los tiempos de apertura y cierre de válvulas de modo que no se excedan las condiciones de diseño, calcular las tasas medias de pasaje de buques y de consumo de agua dulce, y establecer alternativas para minimizar la vorticidad en las tomas de agua de las tinas de almacenamiento lateral. Se muestra que la modelación numérica ha sido la base fundamental del diseño, y el mecanismo para generar resultados a la escala de prototipo libres de efectos de escala presentes en el modelo físico, mientras que el rol principal de la modelación física ha sido el de validar a la modelación numérica. Pero también se demuestra que el modelo físico puso en evidencia efectos de resonancia que obligaron a redefinir algunas de las estrategias de simulación numérica.
AbstractResistive forces associated to boundary layers (‘friction’) are usually out of scale in physical models of hydraulic structures, especially in the case of hydraulically smooth walls, generating distortions in the model results known as scale effects, that can be problematic in some relevant engineering problems. These scale effects can be quantified and corrected using suitable numerical models. In this paper the accuracy of using numerical simulation through the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approximation in order to represent the head losses introduced by friction in hydraulically smooth walls is evaluated for a wide range of Reynolds scales. This is performed by comparing the numerical results for fully developed flow on circular pipes and between parallel plates against experimental results, using the most popular wall treatments. The associated numerical errors, mesh requirements and ranges of application are established for each treatment. It is shown that, when properly applied, RANS models are able to simulate the head losses produced by smooth wall friction accurately enough as to quantify the scale effects present in physical models. A methodology for upscaling physical model results to prototype scale, free of scale effects, is proposed.
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