Development of the SPH model for flooding at a bridge

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26420499
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Hydraulic engineering
• Research Institution: Kyushu University
• Principal Investigator: KIMURA NOBUAKI 九州大学, 工学研究院, 学術研究員 (40706842)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): Tai Akira 九州大学, 大学院・工学研究院, 准教授 (20585921)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 洪水モデル / 流木集積 / 粒子法 / 橋梁

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Worldwide climate change has resulted in severe flooding in Japan in the last decade. Some floods were caused by the substantial accumulation of driftwood or debris at bridges crossing rivers in mountainous areas. In this study, for a two-dimensional open channel, we conducted a laboratory experiment and numerical simulation with and without driftwood modeling to clarify the physical mechanism of a flood event resulting from driftwood accumulation at a bridge. Open-source software SPHysics, implementing a smoothed particle hydrodynamics method, was calibrated with data of the water level measured near a miniature bridge in the laboratory experiment. The simulation clearly showed that the particle-like flow was scattered by the bridge girder and dammed up by the bridge in the upstream direction. By changing the quantity of driftwood, we analyzed the effect of a flood on a bridge.

Free Research Field

水工学