Stability criteria for flooded vehicles: a state‐of‐the‐art review

Abstract

Hazard conditions related to vehicular circulation are important in flood risk management. The knowledge of vehicles stability when those are exposed to flooding is crucial for an informed flood risk management in urban areas. After losing stability, the vehicle becomes buoyant and may be washed away with potential injuries and fatalities. Therefore, the analysis of the stability of vehicles exposed to flooding is important in order to make decisions to reduce the damages and hazards. Herein a comprehensive state‐of‐the‐art on stability of vehicles exposed to flooding is presented. The different studies have been gathered in experimental, theoretical and guidelines proposals and all of them focusing on parked vehicles. There is a clear need to conduct more research in this field by testing a greater variety of models in order to offer a more general methodology to define stability threshold for any vehicle exposed to flooding. Nevertheless, in this work, it has been demonstrate that the most safety stability criterion for vehicles exposed to flooding up to now is the proposed in the Guide AR&R.

Methodology for the damage assessment of vehicles exposed to flooding in urban areas

“…As a general criticism for all three developments, it has to be noted that vehicles may lose their stability even for just 50 cm of water depth or less (Martínez‐Gomariz, Gómez, Russo, & Djordjević, ; Martínez‐Gomariz, Gómez, Russo, & Djordjević, ) and therefore. This vehicle's instability may cause a total vehicle damage and after being washed away may collapse against other urban element, thereby increasing the damages.…”

What Is Nuisance Flooding? Defining and Monitoring an Emerging Challenge

“…Around 13 cm of water reaches the undercarriage of most passenger cars (Gattis et al, ; Shand et al, ), at which point a door cannot be opened safely. Furthermore, as water levels and velocities increase, vehicles eventually lose their stability and may be washed away potentially causing injuries and fatalities (Martínez‐Gomariz, Gómez, Russo, & Djordjević, ; Teo et al, ; Xia et al, ). According to the Australian Rainfall and Runoff (AR&R) criterion (Shand et al, ), which appears to be the best reference to date on the stability of passenger vehicles (Martínez‐Gomariz, Gómez, Russo, & Djordjević, ), 10 cm and 30 cm are considered as limiting high velocity and still water depths for stationary vehicles, respectively (Figure ).…”

Methodology to quantify clogging coefficients for grated inlets. Application to SANT MARTI catchment (Barcelona)

“…Therefore, design values for c o should not be related to low flow conditions, but to higher values of Q. On the other hand, in urban areas high hazard conditions for pedestrian and vehicles are mainly related to high flow velocities (and consequently medium and low flow depths y) produced by low roughness of impervious surfaces like streets and sidewalks and/or their high slope (Martínez et al, 2016(Martínez et al, , 2017(Martínez et al, , 2018Russo et al, 2013a) In this framework, it seems justified the adoption of high ratios Q/y for the design of surface drainage systems. If the ratio Q/y = 10 is considered as a reference for high hazard conditions, coefficients for c o are indicated in Table 6, for the tested inlets and associated patterns.…”

“…Flow on the streets in a rainy day depends on several factors like rainfall intensity, urban area, slopes, street cross-sections, and finally the type and number of inlets. Streets have an important role associated to stormwater management and any street must ensure safety for pedestrians (Gómez, Macchione, & Russo, 2011;Martínez, Gómez, & Russo, 2016;Russo et al, 2013a) and vehicular traffic according to a level of service associated to a return period (Martínez, Gómez, Russo, & Djordjevíc, 2017, 2018.…”