Modelling Debris Flow Risk

Sudden outburst floods from dams often contain very high loads of sediment across a range of sizes. These outbursts can come for the sudden failure of constructed dams for water storage and hydropower, glacial ice dams, landslide dams and others. Thus this is an international problem.

The high sediment load fundamentally changes the nature of the flow. Many current models consider one fluid that is a mix of water and sediment: this mix has varying density and non-Newtonian viscosity, both of which make it difficult to model. Work at Leeds has split the problem into two layers: one of relatively clear water and one of heavily sediment-laden water, but this approach still has limitations in these extreme events. Along with collaborators in Leeds and China, a need has been identified to move to Lagrangian or particle-based methods (SPH, LBM, DPM, amongst others). This will enhance the ability to consider interactions and 3D effects, but will necessitate the use of HPC or GPU-based methods. The PhD will investigate which methods are most appropriate, develop them for this application and then validate the results against measurements at experimental and full-scale. Such data is available through the School of Geography and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Chengdu, China.