Dam-break flow over various obstacles configurations

Fast floods resulting from the failure of hydraulic structures can be characterized by ‘dam-break’ type waves. They pose catastrophic risks to downstream populations and result in severe structural damage, especially in urban areas. To assess and mitigate these risks, it is essential to forecast the influence of urban forms on flooding severity at a global scale. This paper provides datasets from reduced-scale physical experiments of transient flow through various obstacles configurations. The experiments are conducted in a rectangular horizontal open channel, where flow conditions are achieved by rapidly opening a gate holding a volume of water. To assess the impact of obstacle configurations on flow behaviour, two obstacle sizes are investigated, along with one idealized city layout. The experiments provide complete water hydrographs upstream and downstream of the gate. Additionally, the good performance of the code_saturne computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver and the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method in numerically simulating the experiments is demonstrated.