Wash-off and sediment transport experiments in a full-scale urban drainage physical model

Abstract

The continuous growth of cities and the consequent increase in impermeable surfaces make runoff management essential for the sustainable urban development. However, the high variability of pollutant build-up and wash-off processes in urban catchments complicates the development of modelling tools to design and manage palliative measures aimed at reducing environmental impacts of stormwater pollution. In this thesis, an extensive experimental campaign analyzing sediment wash-off, gully pot trapping and in-pipe sediment transport was carried out in a physical rainfall simulator model. In the tests, the different variables involved in these processes were accurately measured under laboratory-controlled conditions. The use of a full-scale urban drainage physical model, the development of a novel rainfall simulator, and the precise definition of hydraulic variables allow the transferability of the results to real field catchments, and render the provided data optimal for the development and validation of more accurate models and formulations. The results obtained have been used to evaluate and analyze a physically-based urban wash-off model, which has recently been proposed as an alternative for adequately modelling the complex physical phenomena in question.