Residence time of buoyant objects in drowning machines

ABSTRACT: Hydraulic jumps are a common feature of rivers and waterways, where they can be found close to spillways, weirs, rocky ledges, and boulders. People adrift upstream of a hydraulic jump are liable to become trapped in the turbulent roller of the hydraulic jump. For this reason, hydraulic jumps have been termed “drowning machines” and are recognized as a public hazard. We use experiments and theory to show that on average a buoyant object spends a time τ/p trapped in a jump, where τ is the period of a harmonic process inherent in the jump, and p is the probability that the object will escape in any time interval τ. The probability p is governed by the statistical theory of extreme values and depends primarily on the ratio between the density of the object and the density of the fluid. We use

SUBMITTER: Gioia G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3080990 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature