Structural investigation of the log accumulation effect in a debris containment grid through towing tank experiments

The large-scale presence of debris is a recurrent issue in the Madeira River, located on Amazon rainforest, North of Brazil, and it is a major concern for the Santo Antonio hydropower plant, located at this region. In order to avoid the abundant amount of debris, floating structures called log booms are installed across the river to retain and deflect them. This paper aims to present the methods used to investigate the structural characteristics of a truncated scale model of a log boom line, through water proof strain-gauges and load cells in hydrodynamic experiments. For that, the model was towed along the model basin of the Institute for Technological Research and wooden scale logs were included to simulate the log jam phenomenon. The paper covers experiment methods, from model design to setting of data acquisition devices and system, characteristics of the experimental runs, and further data analysis. The influence of the scale debris on the structural elements are presented, which can leads to develop a correlation model to scale the fluid-structure interactions in the real prototype.