Recent understanding on the hydraulic erosion of vegetated HPTRM system

Abstract

In recent years, High Performance Turf Enforcement Mat (HPTRM) has been widely noticed and used in revetment projects due to its advantages in both erosion resistance and landscape ecology. Studies have shown that the vegetated HPTRM system has a much better performance in erosion resistance than vegetation lining while it has similar landscape and ecological benefits with vegetation lining. In this paper, firstly a brief overview of existing researches on the hydraulic erosion of vegetated HPTRM System is given, and then a series of experimental and numerical studies on the erosion process of vegetated HPTRM system are introduced, including full scale fume experiments, Erosion Function Apparatus (EFA) tests, high-speed open-channel flow tests and numerical flume tests that conducted by the authors from 2009 to 2018. Based on the test results, new understanding on the erosion characteristics of vegetated HPTRM system is presented, e.g., the feature of erosion development and "upper limit" of erosion. Some useful equations are also given. The vegetated HPTRM system performs effectively in the resistance of hydraulic erosion of open channel flow up to 6 m/s. At last, problems that need to be solved and prospects on future studies are suggested.