A Debris-flow Simulation Model for the Evaluation of Protection Structures

Debris flow is the flow of a solid-fluid mixture and in this investigation it is treated as the flow of a continuum in routing. A numerical model is proposed describing debris flow including erosion and deposition processes with suitable boundary conditions. The numerical model is applied to evaluate the effects of protection structures against debris flow caused by heavy rainfall on the Shen-Mu Stream of Nantou County located in central Taiwan. Simulation results indicated that the proposed model can offer useful pre-planning guidelines for engineers.