Diego Panici

University of Exeter | UoE · Centre for Resilience in Environment Water and Waste (CREWW)

This paper compares the application of two recently published guidance documents for risk-based assessment of hydraulic actions on bridges, namely the UK Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (CS 469, 2021) and the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport Guidelines (2020). The guidelines in each document are applied to two case study bridges...

Woody debris dams/leaky dams are an increasingly popular Natural Flood Management (NFM) measure in low order tributaries, with preliminary evidence suggesting that they are effective in attenuating flood peaks and reducing flood risk. However, the stability of these dams is not widely monitored, and thus there is a poor evidence base for best desig...

The transport and accumulation of floating large wood (LW) debris at bridges can pose a major risk to their structural integrity. The impact forces arising from collisions of LW can cause significant damage to piers, while accumulations can constrict the flow and exacerbate scour at piers and abutments. Furthermore, LW accumulations increase afflux...

Large wood (LW) is used for river restoration, aquatic habitat conservation, and flood control; however,it can pose a threat to human life and the built environment. The formation of LW jams, river management strategies, and design of mitigation measures crucially all depend on how the large wood is transported along a river. This paper experimenta...

Large wood debris can cause critical damage to bridges and other riverine structures, and increase flood risk. Although their effects on hydrodynamic actions and flood levels have been investigated in recent research, little effort has been devoted to reducing the amount of debris that can accumulate at structures. This paper proposes and experimen...

Accumulations of large woody debris can worsen scour at a bridge pier and thereby lead to structural damage. Accumulations can also increase the flood risk in adjacent areas. These consequences can cause disruption to local communities and even pose a risk to human life. Current methodologies acknowledge the existence of these effects of debris but...

A novel method for evaluating the effect of debris accumulation on local scour depth at bridge piers is introduced. The concept of a ‘debris factor’ is proposed to replace the current effective and equivalent pier width approaches that have been shown to overestimate debris-induced scour in many instances. The concept enables a simpler, more direct...

This paper proposes a theoretical model to describe previous laboratory observations of the dynamics of debris accumulations around bridge piers of cylindrical shape. The model is based on the assumption that the observed dynamics is mainly governed by dynamic changes of the point of application of the drag force exerted on the solid body formed by...

This paper analyses the influence of the geometry of bridge piers and the geometry of the supplied debris on the formation and growth of wood debris jams at bridge piers. A total of 162 laboratory experiments have been conducted. Experimental results showed that the maximum size of debris jams formed by the accumulation of cylindrical debris (i.e....

Large wood accumulations at bridge piers substantially contribute to exacerbate localised pier scour, which can undermine the pier foundations and may have catastrophic effects such as pier damage and bridge collapse. Recent experimental research showed that the increase in scour depth can be estimated through an additional factor in the typical sc...

Woody debris accumulations at bridge piers induces significant alterations of the flow field, typically leading to exacerbated scour, increased backwater effects and large lateral loads. Research on this topic has been primarily based on laboratory experiments with debris jam models idealised and of arbitrary size and shape. Recent experiments on t...

The accumulation of large wood debris at bridge piers obstructs the flow, producing increased upstream water levels, large horizontal structural loadings, and exacerbated scour. These effects have frequently been held responsible for the failure of a large number of bridges around the world, as well as for increased risk of flooding of adjacent are...

The accumulation of large wood debris around bridge piers obstructs the flow, producing increased upstream water levels, large horizontal structural loadings and flow field modifications that can considerably exacerbate scour. These effects have frequently been held responsible for the failure of a large number of bridges around the world, as well...

Woody debris accumulations at bridge piers can significantly increase the risk of flooding and bridge failure due to increased afflux upstream of bridges, additional structural loads and exacerbated scour. Despite the importance of this problem, limited research has been conducted on the topic. In this study, we experimentally analyse the process o...