Trapping Large Wood Debris in Rivers: Experimental Study of Novel Debris Retention System
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Volume 147, Issue 3
Abstract
Large wood debris can cause critical damage to bridges and other riverine structures, and increase flood risk. Although their effects on hydrodynamic actions and flood levels have been investigated in recent research, little effort has been devoted to reducing the amount of debris that can accumulate at structures. This paper proposes and experimentally tested a new type of large wood debris retention system in which a series of alternating porous and rack-type modules is placed in-line with the current. Laboratory tests showed that the proposed retention system can offer high levels of efficiency in trapping large wood in rivers. The geometrical features of the structure play a major role and can be chosen carefully to optimize trapping efficiency. Results showed that large wood debris trapped by these structures have limited effects on the increase of the upstream water levels. Further development of the solution proposed in this work can pave the way for use of low-cost, highly effective debris retention systems for effective river management and large wood debris removal in practice.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder data retention policies. Data supporting the results presented in this paper are openly available from the University of Exeter repository at https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.2703.
Acknowledgments
The authors received financial support for this research from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through an Impact Acceleration Award, Grant No. EP/R511699/1. The authors are grateful to the Devon County Council (UK) for the financial and material support provided for this research. The authors thank Julian Yates for the material help with the flume and experimental setup. The authors also are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments which improved substantially the quality of this manuscript.
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Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 3 • March 2021
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 6, 2019
Accepted: Oct 9, 2020
Published online: Dec 31, 2020
Published in print: Mar 1, 2021
Discussion open until: May 31, 2021
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