Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory

The Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory (LHE) is a laboratory of the Civil Engineering Institute (IIC) of the school of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

Hydraulics and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Group

The LHE is a laboratory of environmental fluid mechanics whose research strives toward a better understanding of hydraulic processes in the environment, with particular emphasis on the problems encountered in the Alps. The laboratory also investigates how scientific knowledge is incorporated into land-use planning policies.

Scientific activities and applications

For further information, visit the lab website dedicated to research and teaching. The lab activies cover the following areas

Dynamics of free-surface flows on steep slopes with the objective of modeling natural hazards induced by water such as mudflows and avalanches.
Physics of bed load transport aiming at better management of sediments in waterways.
Hydrodynamics of waterways with the objective of studying free surface flow to better understand dynamic, transport phenomena within rivers including floods and dambreak waves (in mountain areas)
Scientific models and risk management with the objective of providing decision makers with scientific tools related to land use planning and natural hazard mitigation in mountain areas.

You are visiting the site’s administrative frontend. We have created a more friendly website for presenting our research and teaching activities.

© 2018 EPFL Bob de Graffenried. Blaise Dhont working on the Armfield flume

What causes sediment pulses in mountain rivers?

25.07.18Research

One might think that pulses of sediment transport are due to a sudden change in the water discharge or sediment input. Recent experiments carried out by Blaise Dhont and Christophe Ancey show that in the laboratory, even with constant water discharge and a constant supply of gravel upstream of an inclined flume, there are significant variations in the sediment transport rates, with fluctuations as large as 10 times the mean value. The work jas just been published in Geophycal Research Letters (https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL077792, 2018) and is featured in EOS, the AGU magazine (Eos, 99, https: / /doi.org/10.1029/2018EO102311).

LHE on the cover page of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics

25.04.16EPFL

The last volume of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics has selected one image of the experiments conducted at LHE on particle segregation in dry granular flows.