| Facility type: | Testing of soil and rocks |
| Contact email: | michael.trentacoste@dot.gov |
| Contact info: | User name: Michael Trentacoste User position: Associate Administrator for Research, Development, and Technology/Director of Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center User telephone: 202-493-3999 Street: Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, 6300 Georgetown Pike City: McLean, Virginia Postcode: 22101-2296 Department name: U.S. Federal Highway Administration Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center |
| Website address: | http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/research/tfhrc/labs/hydraulics/ |
Description
Short technical description: The Federal Highway Administration's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory provides a means of testing the hydraulic performance of highway drainage structures and stream crossings, including the hydraulics of bridges, culverts, and storm sewers. The purpose of the laboratory is to solve hydraulic and stream stability problems attendant to highways and to support highway engineers with design guidance and tools. Understanding hydraulics and hydrology as they apply to highway structures is a necessity for the proper design of bridges and other drainage structures especially during extreme events such as major floods and washouts. Unique features: The J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory consists of both physical and numerical modeling components used in concert with each other. The main assets of the laboratory include a main flume, mini-flumes, a culvert hydraulics experimental setup, a force balance, along with equipment and methods to make experimental measurements and collect experimental data. The physical modeling facility has a total pumping capacity of 6000 gal/min with variable-frequency drives capable of simulating inflow hydrographs. This laboratory features a 6-ft-wide by 70-ft-long tilting flume capable of simulating 13 percent longitudinal and cross slopes. The flume has a sediment recess for local scour modeling. This laboratory also includes a culvert testing facility for evaluating entrance loss coefficients for various types of culvert inlets. The mini-flume can be set up for 2-D experiments while the junction loss and the mini-culvert setups are equipped to handle 3-D experiments. The force balance flume is used in measuring drag and lift forces. The numerical modeling capability features a 3-D sediment transport model capable of reproducing scour results and can be used very effectively to extend those results to field conditions that could never be attained in a physical laboratory. See this link for detailed laboratory equipment: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/research/tfhrc/labs/hydraulics/tfhrclab/facilities.cfm, including: Space | Tilting Flume | Sediment Recirculating Flume | Mini-Flume | Fish Passage Flume | Ex-Situ Scour Test Device | Junction Loss | Mini-Culvert Force Balance Flume | Dynamic Flume | Rocking Foundation | Data Collection | Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Facilities | Flexible Skin Aerial Shear Stress and Pressure Sensing System Specified type of facility: Hydraulic testing of bridges, culverts, and storm sewers
Keywords
hydraulics, fluid movement, water, bridges, culverts, storm sewers