HyPer SMM (Hybrid Performance assessment of Sand Mitigation Measures) is a two-year project coordinated by von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (BE) and supported by the EC through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Individual Fellowship. HyPer SMM provided an innovative, multidisciplinary and intersectoral postdoctoral training thanks to the synergy between a prestigious academic institution and a highly skilled Consulting Company (Optiflow Company, FR). In this framework, HyPer SMM promoted excellence in sand mitigation science and, specifically, the design and implementation of reliable Wind-Sand Tunnel Tests and innovative Wind-Sand Computational Simulations to assess the performance of Sand Mitigation Measures.
The engineering interest about windblown sand is dictated by the harmful effects that sand has on a number of structures and infrastructures. Windblown sand effects can lead to several incremental costs in infrastructure management, such as loss of capacity and increased maintenance costs, but also to disastrous events, such as train derailment.
Even if the problem was tackled first in the fifties along the Dammam-Riyadh desert railway line, it has emerged as a key scientific, technical and economic issue only in the last ten years. On the one hand, urbanized coastal areas are experiencing increasing windstorm frequency due to climate change. In the worst-case scenario, the frequency and intensity of windstorm in Europe is expected to increase within this century up to +44% and +96%, respectively. This will cause an increment of sand transport events from sandy coasts to anthropic environments. On the other hand, desert regions are more and more hosting new infrastructure megaprojects. The corresponding industrial market is significant. For instance, the Middle East Countries have allocated about USD 260 billion to build 40.000 km of desert railways up to 2030.
In order to cope with the effects above, the demand for the design of windblown Sand Mitigation Measures (SMM) solutions has grown in the last decade and it is expected to further increase in the next years. SMM mostly translate into earthworks, porous fences and solid barriers located along the windblown sand path, between the sand source and the infrastructure.
With some remarkable exceptions, the rigorous design and performance assessment of SMM are still missing in the scientific literature and technical practice, and they are still based on trial-and-error approach. The abovementioned difficulties are due to multiple issues, such as (i) the multidisciplinary nature of the problem, and the weakness of dialogue between civil engineering and fundamental disciplines, i.e. mathematics, physics and geomorphology, (ii) the inborn multiphysics, coupled and strongly nonlinear phenomena involved in, (iii) the multiscale phenomena, ranging from the sand grain scale to the infrastructure characteristic length. As a result, the SMM performance assessment cannot be achieved in analytical terms, and physical and/or computational experiments are required to replicate both the wind flow, the sand flow and sand surface morphodynamics around SMM.
HyPer SMM tackled these problems, and seized the opportunity to:
• Innovate the sand mitigation research field, by advancing competences in experimental and numerical approaches to model windblown sand and their coupling in a multidisciplinary hybrid approach to performance assessment of SMM.
• Innovate the training of the Experienced Researcher by means of:
- A cross-disciplinary training to face the hybrid computational-experimental approach and enhance the scientific maturity, coordination and leadership skills.
- An academy-industry intersectoral training that integrates the scientific research of the former and the industrial and commercial aptitude of the latter.
• Draw best practices / guidelines to assess SMM performance and the validation of the multiphase WindSand code.
• Promote transfer of knowledge:
- By providing to the Experienced Researcher new skills and career opportunities, both in academy and industry.
- By establishing and fostering new collaboration opportunities for von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Optiflow Company.
