Water and Soil Flume

Some of the unique features of the Water and Soil Flume are:

• The in-ground concrete flume (50 m length, 5.5 m width, 2.5 m depth) with the flexibility of constructing smaller compartments with glass panels in the main flume, allowing studies at different scales ranging from around 1m3 to 500 m3 test setup.
• The carriage and rail system on top of the in-ground concrete flume, which offers the possibility of towing an object in the flume with a controlled speed ranging from 1 mm/s up to 2.5 m/sec. This carriage can also be used to pull or push an object horizontally through the soil-water mixture in the flume.
• The unique possibility of using sand and mud (cohesive sediment) in the flume.
• The clay factory with a production capacity of about 12 tons/day of clay with a desired strength/properties of up to 70 kPa undrained shear strength.
• The sand conditioning machine which is used to achieve a different level of compaction in a sand deposit using a beam with 5 vertical vibrating compaction needles.
• The hexapod platform used for multiaxial shearing and fluidization tests (with a max. carrying capacity of 500 kg weight of soil sample), allowing the movement in 6 degrees of freedom.
• The Plexiglas flume (25m length, 0.5m width, 0.7m depth).
• And plenty of measurement devices to monitor and characterize properties of the soft soil-water mixture, for instance:
  – Sand concentration conductivity system.
  – (pore) Pressure sensors.
  – Flow meters.
  – Seepage-induced consolidation (SIC) to examine the permeability and compressibility of soft soil samples under larger stresses.
  – Shear cell system to characterize sand segregation under the influence of shear flow.
  – Several low and high tech rheometers to characterize the flow behavior of non-Newtonian soft soils.
  – Different fiber optics-based monitoring systems (e.g. DTS, DAS) for real-time monitoring of various subsurface properties.
  – Laser-based Particle Image Velocimetry to visualize the flow field velocity.
  – Malvern to characterize the grain size distribution of soft soil samples.
  – Fall cone to measure the undrained strength of soft soil samples.
  – And many more.
  

The Water and Soil Flume can be used for large scale model tests concerning, for example:

• Cutting devices
• Suction devices
• Trenching equipment
• Anchors
• Jets
• Plume dispersion
• Monopile installation and stability
• Geotechnical stability of infrastructures under frequent inundation
• Hydraulic sand and soft soil fill (flow and beaching)
• Breaching and cone formation in dredging applications
• Physics of Non-Newtonian flows and segregating behavior
• Subaerial and subaqueous capping
• Nautical bottom research (e.g. sailing through mud and WID)
• Mudflow and (tailings) dam break
• Channel and ditch lining
• Bubble screen performance
• Deep-sea cutter and collectors

Some of the recent experimental programs at WSF concerned:

• Installation of monopiles used for offshore wind turbines.
• Various deep-sea collectors, intending to minimize the seabed erosion during deep-sea mining operations.
• Water injection dredging, utilizing as much as possible the natural forces for sediment management in ports and waterways.
• Sailing through mud, evaluating the necessity of dredging and thus avoiding too often maintenance dredging.
• Fiber optics-based technologies, quantifying and monitoring subsurface properties in thermal boreholes and wind farm applications.

And many laboratory characterizations of the soft soil properties.