Criterion of vehicle stability in floodwaters based on theoretical and experimental studies

Junqiang Xia (), Roger Falconer, Xuanwei Xiao and Yejiang Wang

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2014, vol. 70, issue 2, 1619-1630

Abstract: Vehicles parking on streets or roads can cause various hazards to people and property when they are swept away by urban floods. It is therefore appropriate to investigate the criterion of vehicle stability for such flood conditions, especially for different scenarios and where the criterion of vehicle stability is usually represented by the incipient velocity for the vehicle. In the current study, different forces acting on a partially submerged vehicle are outlined, together with the corresponding expressions of these forces, and a mechanics-based formula of incipient velocity is given for partially submerged vehicles under different orientation angles. About 200 runs of flume experiments were conducted to obtain the conditions of water depth and corresponding velocity at the threshold of vehicle instability for three orientation angles, using two types of die-cast model vehicles at two model scales. Experimental data obtained from the large-scale model vehicles were then used to determine two parameters in the derived formula. Finally, incipient velocities for three vehicle orientation angles were estimated using two different approaches, including predictions using the scale ratios from the small-scale model vehicles and computations based on derived formula using the prototype vehicle parameters. These critical conditions for the prototype conditions, based on the scale ratios, compared well with the calculations obtained using the derived formula, which guaranteed the predicative accuracy of the formula. In addition, the effect of different ground slopes on the vehicle incipient motion was also investigated, using similar experiments and based on the theory of similarity, which indicated that the incipient velocity for a small passenger vehicle on a ground slope of 1:50 was about 25 % lower than the value on a flat ground for an incoming depth of 0.25 m. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Vehicle stability; Incipient velocity; Theoretical analysis; Flume experiments; Scale ratio; Similarity theory; Urban floods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-013-0889-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:70:y:2014:i:2:p:1619-1630

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-013-0889-2

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().