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Air-filled rubber tubes can combat levee breaches
Posted By britneyg in Fluid Mechanics
Baldwin was sold on the technology of using large, air- and water-filled PVC-coated, polyester-fabric tubes for flood control after seeing them in action on Nov. 9 at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Hydraulic Engineering Research Unit in Stillwater, Okla. The tests and demonstrations were conducted by the Dept. of Homeland Security's Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Miss.
The work is building on trials conducted last year in which ERDC proved, at a 1:4 scale, that tubes can seal breaches within minutes. “Our objective is to set a system within four hours, from go to close,†says Donald Resio, ERDC's senior research scientist.
USDA's 100-acre outdoor laboratory is the only site in the country with sufficient water flow for the tests—125 cu ft per second for 10 to 15 minutes. The supply is siphoned from the adjacent, 3,000-acre Lake Carl Blackwell.
This year, ERDC again showed how a 5-ft-dia., 28-ft-long “portable lightweight universal gasket,†or PLUG, can seal a levee breach. The compressible nature of air and the incompressible nature of water, which partially fills the tubes, makes the PLUG conform to a breach and then go rock solid when the flood tries to force them through. Also demonstrated was a system of tubes, sheets and ballast used to create protective spillways for permitted overtopping. Presentations explained research on techniques for air-dropping tubes into breaches and on deployment issues like weather, flow, differing levee sizes, slopes, soils and other variables.
All the tubes tested are manufactured by Kepner Plastics Fabricators Inc., Torrance, Calif. They are made with PVC-coated polyester fabric, 0.031 in. thick, with a dry weight of 26.5 oz. per sq yd. http://enr.ecnext.com -
The work is building on trials conducted last year in which ERDC proved, at a 1:4 scale, that tubes can seal breaches within minutes. “Our objective is to set a system within four hours, from go to close,†says Donald Resio, ERDC's senior research scientist.
USDA's 100-acre outdoor laboratory is the only site in the country with sufficient water flow for the tests—125 cu ft per second for 10 to 15 minutes. The supply is siphoned from the adjacent, 3,000-acre Lake Carl Blackwell.
This year, ERDC again showed how a 5-ft-dia., 28-ft-long “portable lightweight universal gasket,†or PLUG, can seal a levee breach. The compressible nature of air and the incompressible nature of water, which partially fills the tubes, makes the PLUG conform to a breach and then go rock solid when the flood tries to force them through. Also demonstrated was a system of tubes, sheets and ballast used to create protective spillways for permitted overtopping. Presentations explained research on techniques for air-dropping tubes into breaches and on deployment issues like weather, flow, differing levee sizes, slopes, soils and other variables.
All the tubes tested are manufactured by Kepner Plastics Fabricators Inc., Torrance, Calif. They are made with PVC-coated polyester fabric, 0.031 in. thick, with a dry weight of 26.5 oz. per sq yd. http://enr.ecnext.com -
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