Determination of Grass Swale Hydrological Performance with Rainfall-Watershed-Swale Experimental Setup
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 28, Issue 3
Abstract
High urbanization adversely affects the hydrological behavior of watersheds. Therefore, different stormwater management strategies have been put forward to mitigate these negative effects. Grass swales are one of the environmentally friendly practices that are widely used today as an alternative to traditional infrastructure systems to reduce the peak flow rates, increase infiltration, and the time of concentration. The determination of the effective parameters on the hydrological characteristics of grass swales plays an important role in identification of proper design criteria. To this end, hydrological experiments were conducted by designing a grass swale module and integrating it into a large-scale rainfall-watershed-swale (RWS) experimental setup. The potential effective parameters (rainfall, soil, grass type, drainage area, and grass height) on the hydrological performance of the grass swales were tested with six different swale configurations by the controlled laboratory experiments. Experimental results show that swales decrease the peak flow significantly. In addition, hydrological performance of swales decreases with the increase in rainfall intensity or rainfall duration. Moreover, the soil and grass type have a significant effect on the peak flow reduction and drainage performance of the swales.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This study was conducted as a part of Research Project with ID No. 32929 funded by the Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa Scientific Research Projects Unit. The authors would like to thank the Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa Scientific Research Projects Unit for their support.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 28 • Issue 3 • March 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 16, 2022
Accepted: Nov 2, 2022
Published online: Dec 21, 2022
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: May 21, 2023
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