Innovative Model Strategies in Hydraulics

Dear Colleagues,

Physical hydraulic modelling at a reduced size is an important research and engineering method to understand complex fluid flows, to design, optimize, and visualize sound engineering solutions, and to provide data to calibrate and validate numerical models.

A major limitation of laboratory models are model and scale effects. Many innovative strategies have been developed to model complex hydraulic phenomena, to overcome scale effects, and to improve model–prototype similarity in general.

Celebrated examples of modelling hydraulic phenomena include Scott Russell’s solitary wave generator, Hunter Rouse’s investigation of the turbulence characteristics in hydraulic jumps with air flow under a rigid boundary, and John E. Simpson’s conveyor belt approach to investigate gravity currents.

Many further strategies to avoid, compensate, or correct scale effects and to improve model–prototype similarity have been used, such as experimental and numerical scale series to quantify scale effects and to develop upscaling methods, distorted models in sediment transport, cavitation tunnels to investigate cavitation, the replacement of water with another fluid such as air, and the experimental exploitation of the Reynolds number invariance and self-similarity.

This Special Issue is dedicated to such scaling and model strategies in hydraulics. It aims to present research papers, reviews (state of the art), and case studies of novel, innovative, and/or non-standard laboratory strategies to model complex fluid flows and to improve model–prototype similarity by overcoming scale effects. I am looking forward to receiving original and innovative contributions of high quality.

Dr. Valentin Heller
Guest Editor

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