Acoustic monitoring of flows and sediment transport for numerical model verification

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Nils Rüther, Massimo Guerrero, Ricardo N. Szupiany

Thursday 2 july 2015

11:00 - 11:15h at Africa (level 0)

Themes: (T) Special session, (ST) Acoustic monitoring of flow, turbulence and river discharge

Parallel session: 11F. Special session: Acoustic monitoring of flow, turbulence and river discharge

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The possibility of collecting a large amount of good quality data in a relatively short time has become more and more feasible over the last decade. Measurement techniques has been pushed to their limits so that equipment, which was known for its use in the laboratory, has been successfully applied in the field. As an example it can be mentioned that since years micro Acoustic velocimters (ADVs) are used in rivers, and recently, a laser based particle image velocimerty system, PIV, has been used in a shallow lowland river. Also post processing tools have emerged and applied to large amount of data. One possible use of this large amount of temporal and spacious data can be the verification of numerical models. This paper aims to present cases where advanced acoustic monitoring techniques have been used and newly developed to gather a large amount of data to verify numerical models. These numerical models were mainly 2 and 3 dimensional models, both hydrodynamic and with coupled sediment transport. This study will reveals facts from single and multi-frequency acoustic monitoring (acoustic Doppler current profiler) of flows and suspended load concentrations in the river Parana in Argentina, the river Po in Italy, the Danube in Hungary and the River Devoll in Albania. In addition, detailed ADV measurements of flow and secondary currents in a small meandering river in Northern Norway, are presented. All this monitoring data was used in connection with numerical models, either for boundary conditions or for verification purposes.