Runoff Curve Numbers for Simulated Highway Slopes under Different Slope, Soil-Turf, and Rainfall Conditions
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 3
Abstract
Highway infrastructure is a major non-point source of storm water runoff and associated pollutants. Forty-four simulated rainfall tests were conducted over a turf-covered plot-scale test bed that represented typical highway slopes of 25, 33, and 50%. The two soil-turf combinations were Argentine Bahia over AASHTO A-3 soil (fine sand) and Pensacola Bahia over AASHTO A-2-4 soil (silty fine sand). All the tests were conducted in central Florida, where the weather is subtropical. This paper presents the analysis of curve numbers (CN) obtained from simulated rainfall-runoff data. The CN values for the 24 tests conducted on the Argentine Bahia A-3 soil combination varied from 70.4 to 93.0 with a mean value of 79.6. The CN values for the 20 tests conducted on the Pensacola Bahia A-2-4 soil combination varied from 89.0 to 97.2 with a mean of 94.0. The scatter of the CN values was more for fine sand (standard deviation of 8.31) than for silty fine sand (standard deviation of 2.48). Single factor ANOVA suggested that the CN values are significantly lower () for Argentine/A-3 compared with Pensacola/A-2-4. However, no significant difference () was shown between the CN values calculated based on experimentally determined initial abstraction ratio () and the CN values calculated based on the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) suggested of 0.2. The CN values, in general, increased with slope and rainfall intensity. The CN values determined in this study compare reasonably well with the 70–100 range of CN values reported in the literature for different types of turf-covered soil slopes.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are sincerely grateful to the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for funding the research reported in this paper. Special thanks go to Mr. Rick Renna, State Drainage Engineer of FDOT, for giving valuable suggestions during the progress of this research. The findings presented in this paper are purely scientific opinions of the authors. They are not the official standpoints of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), the University of Central Florida, or the Pennsylvania State University.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 3 • March 2013
Pages: 299 - 306
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 14, 2011
Accepted: Feb 13, 2012
Published online: Feb 15, 2013
Published in print: Mar 1, 2013
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