Flood Water Crossing: Laboratory Model Investigations for Water Velocity Reductions

School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia

^a Corresponding author : anaser@usm.my

Abstract

The occurrence of floods may give a negative impact towards road traffic in terms of difficulties in mobilizing traffic as well as causing damage to the vehicles, which later cause them to be stuck in the traffic and trigger traffic problems. The high velocity of water flows occur when there is no existence of objects capable of diffusing the water velocity on the road surface. The shape, orientation and size of the object to be placed beside the road as a diffuser are important for the effective flow attenuation of water. In order to investigate the water flow, a laboratory experiment was set up and models were constructed to study the flow velocity reduction. The velocity of water before and after passing through the diffuser objects was investigated. This paper focuses on laboratory experiments to determine the flow velocity of the water using sensors before and after passing through two best diffuser objects chosen from a previous flow pattern experiment.