IAHR_Special: Large Scale Physical Modelling for River Research

The understanding of hydro-morphological processes in rivers is still limited. The interactions of the turbulent flow with the river bed, the river banks and the flood plain including “objects” such as mobile sediments, bed forms, vegetation and hydraulic structures are highly complex, multi-scale processes. Small-scale hydraulic models often fail to model real-world waterways adequately due to the lack of multi-scale representations of the flow field (small and large eddies) and the sediments (from silt to boulders) as well as morphodynamics (bars to river types). To gain improved process understanding and to derive mathematical descriptions of these complex interactions, large scale experimental facilities are needed to investigate near-natural processes under controlled conditions.

This special session features various talks from experts in the field of Large Scale Physical Modelling for River Research covering e.g. sediment transport, vegetation and human drift risk.