Small Tilting Flume
The laboratory’s small tilting flume is 19.5-m long and 0.9-m wide. The first 3.7-m of the flume has walls that are 1.2-m high with the remainder of the walls with a 0.6-m height. The flume is supported by a center pin and two mechanically connected screw jacks that allow the flume slope to be varied from 0 to 10%.
Water is supplied to the flume from the laboratory head tank and water levels are controlled via a tainter style tail gate.
The small tilting flume has been used extensively for numerous hydraulic model studies1, 2 and geomorphologic studies3, 4, 5 including flow through vegitation6, 7, stream re-naturalization using artificial pool-and-riffle sytems8 and an examination of the hydrodynamics associated with the use of bendway weirs to control erosion at meander bends9.
View of small tilting flume
1 Freeman, Jeffrey W. and Marcelo H. García. 1996 May. “Hydraulic Model Study for the Drown Proofing of Yorkville Dam, Illinois.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Civil Engineering Studies, Hydraulic Engineering Series No. 50 (UILU-ENG-96-2005). 95 p
2 Schuster, Josephine M. and Marcelo H. García. 2000 May. “Hydraulic Model Study for the Optimization of the Spillway at Batavia Dam, Fox River, Illinois.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Civil Engineering Studies, Hydraulic Engineering Series No. 66. 73 p.
3 Rodriguez, JF and Garcia, MH. 2008 Laboratory measurements of 3-D flow patterns and turbulence in straight open channel with rough bed. Journal of Hydraulic Research, 46(4), 454-465.
4 Bittner, Laura D., Yarko Niño, and Marcelo García. 1995 December. “River Bed Response to Channel Width Variation Theory and Experiments.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Civil Engineering Studies, Hydraulic Engineering Series No. 49. 123 p.
5 Lopez, Fabian and Marcelo H. García. 1996 October. “Turbulence Structure in Cobble-Bed Open-Channel Flow.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Civil Engineering Studies, Hydraulic Engineering Series No. 52 (UILU-ENG-96-2012). 137 p.
6 Dunn, Chad, Fabian Lopez, and Marcelo H. García. 1996 October. “Mean Flow and Turbulence in a Laboratory Channel with Simulated Vegetation.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Civil Engineering Studies, Hydraulic Engineering Series No. 51 (UILU-ENG-96-2009). 148 p.
7 Lopez, F. and Garcia, MH. 2001 Mean flow and turbulence structure of openchannel flow through non-emergent vegetation. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering – ASCE, 127(5), 392-402.
8 Rodriguez, J.F. 2003 Mean flow and turbulence characteristics of pool-riffle structures in low-gradient streams. Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois.
9 Abad, JD, Rhoads, BL, Guneralp, I and Garcia, MH. 2008 Flow structure at different stages in a meander-bend with bendway weirs. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering – ASCE, 134(8), 1052-1063.