Prototyping

This prototype parallels our study of the meandering rivers. We are trying to duplicate what Christian Braudrick, William Dietrich, and their fellow colleagues have done at the University of California at Berkeley. They have successfully been able to construct a scaled down version of a meandering river that successfully maintains meanders in the river. By adding light weight plastic particles used in sandblasting to the water that flows through this model and alfalfa sprouts as the deep rooted vegetation of the river banks, the stream is able to maintain one main stem. Other studies similar to this have resulted in a system of braided streams that have no regularity and no significance in studying the effects of meandering rivers. It is our hope to successfully duplicate what has been produced in California, and study the effects that meandering rivers have across the nation.

Here is what we have done to this point. These plastic bins are 40” x 20”.

We have also diagrammed what the system should do in working condition.

Continuation of building the model and the results after running a few test with water in the model.

Awesome Video Documentation:

We continued to run some more test over the weekend in preparation for the larger model. The model experienced some construction issues when the water filter for the sand broke causing the model to leak and loose sand. We changed the filter to a more suitable cloth filter that has held up well. We have explored different materials and techniques of building a larger one over the break. One main concern is where to build the new model. It needs to be close and accessible, but safe. This is something that needs to be established before proceeding with the new construction.