Experimental study of dam-break flow against an isolated obstacle

During a dam-break flow, the whole valley is involved, which implies that roads, bridges and urban buildings become obstacles to the flow. The purpose of this paper is to provide data about the influence of such an obstacle on a dam-break wave, the obstacle being an idealised representation of a single building. The experimental set-up consists in a channel with a rectangular shaped obstacle, representing a building, placed immediately downstream from the dam. The building is neither centred in the channel, nor aligned with the flow direction. Flow observation shows that after the violent impact of the wave on the building, the flow is forced to change its direction to pass the building. This implies the formation of hydraulic jumps with the consequence that the water level may rise locally higher than without building. Behind the building, a wake zone is observed. Then, further downstream, the flow slowly recovers the structure it would have had without the building. Several measurement devices were used to characterise the flow. At five different locations, the water level evolution was measured by means of water level gauges while the velocity was measured by means of an acoustic Doppler velocimeter. Then, the surface velocity field was obtained using digital imaging techniques.