THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF FLOW AND DRIFTWOOD USING UNSTRUCTURED GRID : VALIDATION IN BLOCKING PROBABILITY BEING TRAPPED BY BRIDGE AND WEIR STRUCTURES

Abstract

 This study incorporates a numerical model for driftwood into OpenFOAM, an open-source computational fluid dynamics library that can handle unstructured grids. Simulations for model validation are conducted for experiments of wood accumulation at a bridge pier and a weir. Numerical results well simulated blocking probability at a bridge pier. Additionally, the simulation explained the behavior of driftwood around a weir to some extent, although further model improvements of water-wood interaction are necessary to accurately simulate the wood blocking probability at a weir. The present numerical model allows for driftwood simulation including flow around bridges and weirs with complex shapes, which will be highly practical tool for risk assessment and countermeasure design against driftwood.