Above: A view of water flow around a scale-model bridge abutment (black feature) in the flume. Below: The LSPIV mapping of the flow field around the model abutment and analysis of flow around the abutment.

Water Laboratory Offers Research Opportunities: Large Flume Research

October 15. 2009 -

The University’s growing programs of water science and engineering will benefit substantially from the availability of a large flume for re-circulating water and sediment. The flume (60ft x 12ft x 4ft), located in the College’s Water Resources Laboratory, enables numerous water-flow topics to be investigated. The topics include, for example, flow through bridge waterways and other hydraulic structures, flow and morphologic behavior of alluvial channels, pollutant dispersion, and processes related to eco-hydraulics. Research is being conducted by Dean Rob Ettema, Research Scientist Edward Kempema, and Ph.D. student Reinaldo Morales Garcia.

Moreover, the flume can facilitate the teaching of courses focused on the use of instrumentation and methods for measuring waterflow and water-transport processes (sediment, contaminant, heat). Of particular interest is educating students about the use of new developments in flow instrumentation. The illustrations here show how the entire flow around a model bridge abutment can be mapped quickly by means of a method called Large-scale Particle Image Velocimetry (LSPIV). A digital video-camera mounted above the flume records changes in water-surface movement. Software then converts the changes to velocity vectors in a flow field. This method readily yields information on the flow field around a bridge abutment, or around channel features of ecological interest (ranging from a channel reach, to cluster of freshwater mussels protruding above the bed of a channel).