River Hydraulics research team – INRAE Lyon
In order to contribute to improved hydrographic networks management, the River Hydraulics team studies the physical behavior of rivers. The effort focuses on the measuring, understanding and modeling of flows and transported materials: pollutants and sediments. In the context of natural watercourses, this study involves the description of the morphology of the various beds and their evolution, mainly related to the hydrological regime and to human interactions.
The research areas of the team are:
- Complex flows (mixing layer, dispersion, turbulence , etc.)
- Risks related to natural floods and structure breaks;
- Uncertainty analysis of flow measurements (hydrometry) and innovating measurement techniques;
- Transfers of suspended materials and associated pollutants;
- Sediment transport, river morphodynamics and management.
A specificity of the team is to address these research topics with three complementary approaches:
- In-situ experimental measurements, allowing the study of complex hydro-sedimentary and morphological processes, with a special focus in hydrometry;
- Experimental laboratory measurements, allowing the fine study of processes under controlled conditions;
- Numerical modeling, allowing to integrate all the studied processes and to apply them for prospective modeling.
The objectives of the team are, in addition to the development of knowledge inherent in the field of research, to provide methods and tools useful to researchers, engineers, and technicians working in the field of water.
The team consists of 7 researchers, 2 engineers and 2 technicians with the support of a dozen contract workers (internships, doctoral students, post-docs, engineers). The team is led by Benoît Camenen.