Author(s): S. D'Agostino; A. Defina

Linked Author(s):

Keywords: Flow resistance; Urban flooding; Small-sized obstacles; Numerical simulations

Abstract: The resistance to flow produced by small-sized obstacles, such as street furniture and vehicles, in an urban street during flooding events is estimated by refined numerical simulations. The contribution to resistance of these obstacles is found to be non-negligible. Two-dimensional shallow flow models are widely used and are effective tools to assess the flooding of urban areas. However, their use is hampered by a number of issues mainly related to the need of very refined description of the domain geometry, at different scales. At the building scale, a very promising approach is given by the so called porosity models. In this case, however, streets are assumed as planar surfaces thus neglecting the many small-sized obstacles that typically crowd an urban street. These small-sized obstacles, which include street furniture such as, e.g., bus shelters, waste containers, etc., as well as traffic islands and parked or moving vehicles, are likely to increase flow resistance. This additional resistance can be accounted for, in numerical models, by suitably adjusting the friction coefficient. However, at present, the importance of these obstacles in affecting the flow resistance is not yet assessed. Accordingly, the main purpose of this work is to gain a quantitative idea of the impact, in terms of additional flow resistance, provided by the above small-sized obstacles, randomly distributed within and along a typical urban street.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/978-981-11-2731-1_198-cd

Year: 2018