Experimental and Numerical Study of Stability of Vehicles Exposed to Flooding

Abstract

Hazard conditions related to cars in urban areas circulation are important in flood riskmanagement. The definition of stability conditions for vehicles when they are in rban areas during flood events is extremely relevant in the hazard and risk studies related to floods. When we test the stability of a car, the vehicle can be buoyant and may be swept away creating potential injuries and even casualties. In this document a description and presentation of results of an experimental campaign developed at the UPC laboratory in Barcelona is presented. For all the cars tested it is possible to define their specific stability limits that can be used by municipalities in their hazard and risk studies. Moreover, same process has been repeated but in a numerical way, with a 3D commercial code (Flow3D). The results obtained showed the possibilities of 3D numerical model to complement physical tests as a virtual lab, with the only drawback of the high computational time, several days to reproduce few seconds of real time.