Equipments Details
Description
Heriot-Watt University's Green Slope Facility is managed by Dr. Daniel Green ([email protected]) and based at the Edinburgh campus, within the William Arrol Laboratories.
Technical specifications:
The large-scale Facility is made up of a rainfall simulator and a fully-adjustable surface layer, which is primarily used to inform future green infrastructure design and feed into numerical modelling.
The testbed surface is a dual-axis soil slope (6 m long, 2.5 m wide, 0.3 m deep) with a folding action along the centre line, allowing the simulation of a variety of different experimental configurations. The testbed can receive simulated inflow via the rainfall simulator and overland flow simulator. The rainfall simulator is a nozzle type spray system capable of producing rainfall intensities up to 150 mm h-1. Overland flow can be applied via the runoff simulator overflow trough. Outflow and runoff volumes and quality can be measured at the base of the slope or via sub-surface drainage outlets which are spatially distributed across the base of the surface.
The folding slope allows different topographies and slope gradients to be simulated. The gradients of the two halves of the soil slope are independently tiltable in the vertical dimension (top half from 0o to +15o and the bottom half from -15o to +15o. The entire slope also tilts along the horizontal dimension from 0o to 5o.
The Facility is made up of a dual slope container surface. Each container is designed to hold substrate volumes of 2.5 m x 3 m x 0.3 m. This can be adjusted using the hydraulic control panel. There is also a water supply system. This comprises of two systems: (1) a rainfall simulator, and (2) a surface run-on system, controlled by multi-stage centrifugal Grundfos pumps.
Facility aim, application and purpose:
The Facility’s overarching aim is to advance our understanding of green infrastructure performance, degradation and maintenance requirements within a controlled, closed and monitored system. This system aids our understanding of the functioning of bioretention cells ‘rain gardens’ and green roofs, providing physically-based model input data for upscaling the potential of green infrastructure and to help us quantify aging/deterioration of these systems over time.
The Facility provides a systematic, evidence-based approach to allow widespread, actionable implementation of rain gardens in our cities. In contrast to field systems, the GSF provides a controlled, closed testbed to ‘Play God’ with hydroclimate inputs (i.e. rainfall and surface runoff inflows) and the soil/vegetation configurations of SuDS and green infrastructure. The testbed allows us to simulate high-intensity design storm events which are outside of the instrumented record, allowing us to predict the performance of rain gardens under different climate change scenarios and over future, accelerated simulated time periods. Additionally, this testbed allows us to run identical input weather conditions in succession, whilst changing soil or vegetation configurations within the Facility, to optimise and enhance rain garden functionality.
Contact details and Facility hire:
This Facility is managed and operated by Dr. Daniel Green, Assistant Professor of Nature-based Solutions at Heriot-Watt University. The Facility and associated monitoring equipment and instrumentation is available for business and industrial hire. Collaborative funding applications suiting a range of multidisciplinary research applications are welcomed. The Facility comes with expert technician support and researchers who can assist with experimental setup and interpretation of results.
Technical specifications:
The large-scale Facility is made up of a rainfall simulator and a fully-adjustable surface layer, which is primarily used to inform future green infrastructure design and feed into numerical modelling.
The testbed surface is a dual-axis soil slope (6 m long, 2.5 m wide, 0.3 m deep) with a folding action along the centre line, allowing the simulation of a variety of different experimental configurations. The testbed can receive simulated inflow via the rainfall simulator and overland flow simulator. The rainfall simulator is a nozzle type spray system capable of producing rainfall intensities up to 150 mm h-1. Overland flow can be applied via the runoff simulator overflow trough. Outflow and runoff volumes and quality can be measured at the base of the slope or via sub-surface drainage outlets which are spatially distributed across the base of the surface.
The folding slope allows different topographies and slope gradients to be simulated. The gradients of the two halves of the soil slope are independently tiltable in the vertical dimension (top half from 0o to +15o and the bottom half from -15o to +15o. The entire slope also tilts along the horizontal dimension from 0o to 5o.
The Facility is made up of a dual slope container surface. Each container is designed to hold substrate volumes of 2.5 m x 3 m x 0.3 m. This can be adjusted using the hydraulic control panel. There is also a water supply system. This comprises of two systems: (1) a rainfall simulator, and (2) a surface run-on system, controlled by multi-stage centrifugal Grundfos pumps.
Facility aim, application and purpose:
The Facility’s overarching aim is to advance our understanding of green infrastructure performance, degradation and maintenance requirements within a controlled, closed and monitored system. This system aids our understanding of the functioning of bioretention cells ‘rain gardens’ and green roofs, providing physically-based model input data for upscaling the potential of green infrastructure and to help us quantify aging/deterioration of these systems over time.
The Facility provides a systematic, evidence-based approach to allow widespread, actionable implementation of rain gardens in our cities. In contrast to field systems, the GSF provides a controlled, closed testbed to ‘Play God’ with hydroclimate inputs (i.e. rainfall and surface runoff inflows) and the soil/vegetation configurations of SuDS and green infrastructure. The testbed allows us to simulate high-intensity design storm events which are outside of the instrumented record, allowing us to predict the performance of rain gardens under different climate change scenarios and over future, accelerated simulated time periods. Additionally, this testbed allows us to run identical input weather conditions in succession, whilst changing soil or vegetation configurations within the Facility, to optimise and enhance rain garden functionality.
Contact details and Facility hire:
This Facility is managed and operated by Dr. Daniel Green, Assistant Professor of Nature-based Solutions at Heriot-Watt University. The Facility and associated monitoring equipment and instrumentation is available for business and industrial hire. Collaborative funding applications suiting a range of multidisciplinary research applications are welcomed. The Facility comes with expert technician support and researchers who can assist with experimental setup and interpretation of results.
Details
| Name | Green Slope Facility |
|---|---|
| Acquisition date | 1/07/24 |
Keywords
- G Geography (General)
- Hydrology
- Green Infrastructure
- SuDS
- Nature-based Solutions
- TC Hydraulic engineering. Ocean engineering
- Laboratory experimentation
- Rainfall simulators
- Experimental testbed
Research technique
- Characterisation & Measurement
- Computational
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