$1.7 million awarded to design levee facility in wake of Hurricane Katrina

Researchers at CSU's Engineering Research Center will design and build one of the world's largest wave overtopping simulators at the University's Foothills Campus in Fort Collins.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded $1.7 million to a world-renowned Colorado State University water researcher to design and build a levee-testing facility capable of simulating erosion from the enormous waves that contributed to Hurricane Katrina's devastating toll on New Orleans.

Chris Thornton, director of CSU's Engineering Research Center and assistant professor of engineering, and his team will design and build one of the world's largest wave overtopping simulators at the University's Foothills Campus in Fort Collins. The team will establish methodologies and guidelines for determining the forces exerted on levee systems during extreme storm conditions, not just the New Orleans area, says Thornton.

A specially designed 28-by-7-foot computer-operated tower and control mechanism will simulate waves larger than the six-foot waves that hit New Orleans. Water will be sent into 40-by-6-foot trays that will simulate levees made of soils specific to any region.

Researchers with the Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Engineering Laboratory at the Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., are building trays that will simulate conditions consistent with those of the Gulf region. Once established, the trays will be shipped to Fort Collins and tested during spring and summer 2010.

But it's not as simple as testing one levee in New Orleans, says Thornton. "While testing can be specific to a field location and account for unique soil and vegetation combinations, we need to develop design methodologies that allow us to use all the tools in our toolbox."

Much work already has been done across the academic, engineering, and manufacturing communities to develop engineered systems that resist the force of flowing water, notes Thornton. "Our job will be to crack the nut of physics and develop a method permitting the effects from forces generated on levees during wave overtopping to be incorporated into current design methodologies."

As director of CSU's Engineering Research Center hydraulics laboratory, Thornton manages roughly $1 million dollars annually in applied research solving site-specific problems for projects located around the world. The laboratory has been an international leader in conducting model studies and training future engineers in hydraulics and river mechanics for the past 60 years.

Thornton says the Army Corps selected Colorado State for the project because of the unique capabilities of the facility and the project team's experience in performing dam overtopping analyses, spillway studies, dam-foundation erosion research, and erosion-control performance testing.