Experimental and Numerical Study of the Flow Structure around Two Partially Buried Objects on a Deformed Bed

Abstract

The flow characteristics around two partially buried objects, a short cylinder (SC) and a truncated cone (TC) were examined experimentally and numerically. Experiments were conducted in a large tilting flume with vertical walls made of acrylic plastic and steel floor covered by a 24-m long sand pit. For each experiment, the object was placed on a flat sandy bed, the flume was filled to a water depth of 41 cm, and a steady unidirectional current was established at high Reynolds numbers while sinking of the object was tracked over time. Velocity records were taken with an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) probe at the final stage of burial and scour hole evolution. The flow structure around each object was further investigated using a model that solves the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with a