学术报告:Design Paradigm for Hydraulic Engineering Sustainability

发布时间:2017-05-31访问次数:34

       报告题目:Design Paradigm for Hydraulic Engineering Sustainability

       报  告  人:Prof. Tsung-chow Su, Florida Atlantic University

       报告时间:6月1日(周四)下午2:00

       报告地点:严恺馆502会议室

       报告简介:Scouring which is a specific type of erosion is a main cause of coastal structure destruction responsible for 60% of bridge failures. Scouring prevention is a major hydraulic engineering challenge. Current approaches such as protection using concrete rubble are unable to achieve long-term scouring prevention. Here we show that an engineering principle first stated in the third century B.C. can be used to prevent scouring. The Dujiangyan irrigation system, was constructed around 256 B.C. for water conservation and flood control. This hydraulic engineering system continues to operate today, making it the only large hydraulic project that has survived from ancient times. On the east side of Dujiangyan, people have built a shrine for Li Bing, the engineer and governor. Several of Bing’s design paradigms are inscribed in the shrine. One paradigm states, “When encountering frontal flow, make the heart of the structure porous”. We show for the first time that this paradigm can be applied in modern hydraulic engineering challenges, namely in preventing bridge and pipe scour. We have found, through visual investigation in a recirculating flume, that this ancient paradigm can prevent scouring, opening a new approach toward engineering sustainability. We report the visual investigation, relate the design paradigm to established principles of modern fluid dynamics, and provide an explanation for its possible ancient philosophical origin. We applied this paradigm to airfoil design and has achieved substantial increase in lift/drag. We anticipate that our work will have significant impact on hydraulic engineering design principles, will substantially reduce infrastructure maintenance costs, improve performance of fluid machineries and will enable infrastructure survival through upcoming climate changes.