Abstract
Culverts are valuable hydraulic structures necessary to safely route runoff through roadways or natural barriers. They must be correctly designed to avoid upstream flooding, sediment and debris accumulation or structural failure. Early works from John L. French, I.E. Idelchik and the Federel Highway Administration provide a deep insight on culver hydraulics, and their works confirm the complexities of culvert hydraulics on culvert design and optimization. These complexities are due to multiple flow conditions present. Moreover, in this study, a physical culver model was utilized to investigate the hydraulic efficiencies of conventional tapered linear inlets and optimized nonlinear inlets with elliptical arc edges. The experimental efforts included tests under outlet and inlet-controlled conditions, as well as scenarios using blockage elements with 35.7% and 75% blockage ratios. The overall results showed that the optimized inlets performed very well under inlet control conditions, however, further testing is necessary to corroborate the behavior of the optimized inlets under outlet control conditions.