Analog Channel-Shape Model. I’m painting the model black because the sand is a light brown.  It will help me see and document the results.  The flow will be controlled with a small filter fountain pump placed in the end basin (which in reality would be the “Cuatro Bocas” turning basin, just past the Riachuelo and squarely in the Port Dock Sud facilities).  The water will be pushed through a 1/2” inside diameter vinyl tube.  I wanted the biggest one possible to approximate a slow, even flow of the kind in the Riachuelo (as opposed to the same amount of water shooting through a tiny pipe at high velocity). The design goal for the sediment aspect of the project is to design a channel-sediment regime that ends up with no sediment in the basin where the pump is.  This would suggest that I am trapping all of the sediments of the Riachuelo within the Tierra Plastica project.   The significance of this concentration means a reduction in the total amount and dispersal of contaminated sediments that must be dredged, treated, and confined by the Port- a major value added and hopefully validating the economic expenditure necessitated by the proposed changes.

Analog Channel-Shape Model.

I’m painting the model black because the sand is a light brown.  It will help me see and document the results.  The flow will be controlled with a small filter fountain pump placed in the end basin (which in reality would be the “Cuatro Bocas” turning basin, just past the Riachuelo and squarely in the Port Dock Sud facilities).  The water will be pushed through a 1/2” inside diameter vinyl tube.  I wanted the biggest one possible to approximate a slow, even flow of the kind in the Riachuelo (as opposed to the same amount of water shooting through a tiny pipe at high velocity).

The design goal for the sediment aspect of the project is to design a channel-sediment regime that ends up with no sediment in the basin where the pump is.  This would suggest that I am trapping all of the sediments of the Riachuelo within the Tierra Plastica project.  

The significance of this concentration means a reduction in the total amount and dispersal of contaminated sediments that must be dredged, treated, and confined by the Port- a major value added and hopefully validating the economic expenditure necessitated by the proposed changes.

1 year ago  View high resolution

Analog Channel-Shape model. This is a 1”=100’ model of the channel of the water channel for the Riachuelo Canal.  The vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of 10x.  The reason is simply that a 10’ deep channel at this scale would be miniscule and would make it very difficult to keep water and sand in the channel and still have any flow.  And the flow- specifically differences in flow- is all that matters here! The material is blue foam; it is a close-cell material and so non-absorptive, it is easy to cut and change, and can be fixed with silicone.  My intent is to run a test with the existing channel shape for a set amount of time, documenting the results, and then run a series of variations testing the effects of changes in shape and distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, dredge pits, and wing dams) on flow and deposition in the channel.  I will then measure the sediment amounts deposited in various locations and feed those back in to the matlab code for specific sections of the channel.   I hope that this will allow me to approximate the sediment- its forms and effects as an instrument itself- and to propose design strategies that can grapple with the instrumental aspects.

Analog Channel-Shape model.


This is a 1”=100’ model of the channel of the water channel for the Riachuelo Canal.  The vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of 10x.  The reason is simply that a 10’ deep channel at this scale would be miniscule and would make it very difficult to keep water and sand in the channel and still have any flow.  And the flow- specifically differences in flow- is all that matters here!

The material is blue foam; it is a close-cell material and so non-absorptive, it is easy to cut and change, and can be fixed with silicone.  My intent is to run a test with the existing channel shape for a set amount of time, documenting the results, and then run a series of variations testing the effects of changes in shape and distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, dredge pits, and wing dams) on flow and deposition in the channel.  I will then measure the sediment amounts deposited in various locations and feed those back in to the matlab code for specific sections of the channel.  

I hope that this will allow me to approximate the sediment- its forms and effects as an instrument itself- and to propose design strategies that can grapple with the instrumental aspects.

1 year ago  View high resolution

This graphs are the results of a matlab script that calculate shoaling and channel infilling. Its algorithms allow me to account for depth, width, water flow, course sediment load (bigger particles, like sand, usually moving along the bottom of the water channel as bed load) and fine sediment load (finer particles like clay, usually suspended in the water column) and approximate change in deposition and bypass over time.

It’s an exciting tool, and I couldn’t have used it without the help of Dr. Julie Rosati and Kenneth Mitchell of the US Army Corps of Engineers.  For my purposes I do understand it to have limitations- it accounts for the shape of the channel in section, but not very well in plan.  For instance, the helical currents that exists in a curvy channel (like the Riachuelo) create areas of faster and slower flow in plan which causes sediment to pile up on the inside curve and while the channel on the outside curve stays clear.

This tool will allow me to establish a periodicity to the dredging cycle- in short, when the green line gets above the percent (the decimal on the y axis) that the channel is allowed to infill and still stay open for navigation, then the sediment must be cleared.  Here, I am showing on the left a calculation estimating infilling rates for a depth of 20 feet (the approximate current depth, though in reality it varies wildly due to lack of maintenance) and on the right the infilling rate for a depth of 10 feet- the new design depth for the central channel.  This tool allows me to understand how much sediment needs to be moved how often, but in a non-spatial way.

To work beyond the limitations of this tool I intend to build an analog channel-shape model that will enable me to spatialize these results and test the effects of formal design moves on the deposition locations.  I hope I can then feed this information (measuring proportions of sediment from different locations) back into the matlab model in a much more localized and specific way, running myriad tests that help me account for specific approximations of sediment deposition as part of a larger landscape strategy for the Riachuelo Canal. 

Expect to see many more of these graphs…

1 year ago 

This is the excerpt from the 30 minute test run for the analog channel-shape model.  I am still trying to calibrate the flow rate from the pump and decide on the appropriate rate for adding sand to get visible and repeatable results.

Despite the short comings (some leaks, calibrating water and sand flow) it appears that this model will allow for me to test the effects of shape changes (opening a new basin, flushing canal) as well as the distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, wing dams, dredge pits) that I have identified as the implementation strategies meant to allow me to trap sediments while also keeping a shallow navigational trunk line and access channels across the Riachuelo clear.  

You can start to see in this simple test the effects of basins and pits in allowing the settling of suspended sediments and trapping bed load.  After 30 minutes of testing these effects were beginning to manifest.  However, based on the small quantities and the need to see scaled-up results (due to the impossibility of scaling sediment and water, and the exaggerated vertical scale of the model) I plan to set up the experiment to be able to run each test for 2 hours, document it with video and time lapse photos.  I then plan to drain the model and photograph the sediments in their resting location (assuming they don’t move too much during draining) and then collect and weigh the different sediments from each locations to understand proportional deposition.  I think this will then give me information that I can relate back to the matlab shoaling calculator, allowing me to spatialize the data outputs from that computation.

1 year ago 

Analog Channel-Shape Model. I’m painting the model black because the sand is a light brown.  It will help me see and document the results.  The flow will be controlled with a small filter fountain pump placed in the end basin (which in reality would be the “Cuatro Bocas” turning basin, just past the Riachuelo and squarely in the Port Dock Sud facilities).  The water will be pushed through a 1/2” inside diameter vinyl tube.  I wanted the biggest one possible to approximate a slow, even flow of the kind in the Riachuelo (as opposed to the same amount of water shooting through a tiny pipe at high velocity). The design goal for the sediment aspect of the project is to design a channel-sediment regime that ends up with no sediment in the basin where the pump is.  This would suggest that I am trapping all of the sediments of the Riachuelo within the Tierra Plastica project.   The significance of this concentration means a reduction in the total amount and dispersal of contaminated sediments that must be dredged, treated, and confined by the Port- a major value added and hopefully validating the economic expenditure necessitated by the proposed changes.

Analog Channel-Shape Model.

I’m painting the model black because the sand is a light brown.  It will help me see and document the results.  The flow will be controlled with a small filter fountain pump placed in the end basin (which in reality would be the “Cuatro Bocas” turning basin, just past the Riachuelo and squarely in the Port Dock Sud facilities).  The water will be pushed through a 1/2” inside diameter vinyl tube.  I wanted the biggest one possible to approximate a slow, even flow of the kind in the Riachuelo (as opposed to the same amount of water shooting through a tiny pipe at high velocity).

The design goal for the sediment aspect of the project is to design a channel-sediment regime that ends up with no sediment in the basin where the pump is.  This would suggest that I am trapping all of the sediments of the Riachuelo within the Tierra Plastica project.  

The significance of this concentration means a reduction in the total amount and dispersal of contaminated sediments that must be dredged, treated, and confined by the Port- a major value added and hopefully validating the economic expenditure necessitated by the proposed changes.

Analog Channel-Shape model. This is a 1”=100’ model of the channel of the water channel for the Riachuelo Canal.  The vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of 10x.  The reason is simply that a 10’ deep channel at this scale would be miniscule and would make it very difficult to keep water and sand in the channel and still have any flow.  And the flow- specifically differences in flow- is all that matters here! The material is blue foam; it is a close-cell material and so non-absorptive, it is easy to cut and change, and can be fixed with silicone.  My intent is to run a test with the existing channel shape for a set amount of time, documenting the results, and then run a series of variations testing the effects of changes in shape and distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, dredge pits, and wing dams) on flow and deposition in the channel.  I will then measure the sediment amounts deposited in various locations and feed those back in to the matlab code for specific sections of the channel.   I hope that this will allow me to approximate the sediment- its forms and effects as an instrument itself- and to propose design strategies that can grapple with the instrumental aspects.

Analog Channel-Shape model.


This is a 1”=100’ model of the channel of the water channel for the Riachuelo Canal.  The vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of 10x.  The reason is simply that a 10’ deep channel at this scale would be miniscule and would make it very difficult to keep water and sand in the channel and still have any flow.  And the flow- specifically differences in flow- is all that matters here!

The material is blue foam; it is a close-cell material and so non-absorptive, it is easy to cut and change, and can be fixed with silicone.  My intent is to run a test with the existing channel shape for a set amount of time, documenting the results, and then run a series of variations testing the effects of changes in shape and distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, dredge pits, and wing dams) on flow and deposition in the channel.  I will then measure the sediment amounts deposited in various locations and feed those back in to the matlab code for specific sections of the channel.  

I hope that this will allow me to approximate the sediment- its forms and effects as an instrument itself- and to propose design strategies that can grapple with the instrumental aspects.

This graphs are the results of a matlab script that calculate shoaling and channel infilling. Its algorithms allow me to account for depth, width, water flow, course sediment load (bigger particles, like sand, usually moving along the bottom of the water channel as bed load) and fine sediment load (finer particles like clay, usually suspended in the water column) and approximate change in deposition and bypass over time.

It’s an exciting tool, and I couldn’t have used it without the help of Dr. Julie Rosati and Kenneth Mitchell of the US Army Corps of Engineers.  For my purposes I do understand it to have limitations- it accounts for the shape of the channel in section, but not very well in plan.  For instance, the helical currents that exists in a curvy channel (like the Riachuelo) create areas of faster and slower flow in plan which causes sediment to pile up on the inside curve and while the channel on the outside curve stays clear.

This tool will allow me to establish a periodicity to the dredging cycle- in short, when the green line gets above the percent (the decimal on the y axis) that the channel is allowed to infill and still stay open for navigation, then the sediment must be cleared.  Here, I am showing on the left a calculation estimating infilling rates for a depth of 20 feet (the approximate current depth, though in reality it varies wildly due to lack of maintenance) and on the right the infilling rate for a depth of 10 feet- the new design depth for the central channel.  This tool allows me to understand how much sediment needs to be moved how often, but in a non-spatial way.

To work beyond the limitations of this tool I intend to build an analog channel-shape model that will enable me to spatialize these results and test the effects of formal design moves on the deposition locations.  I hope I can then feed this information (measuring proportions of sediment from different locations) back into the matlab model in a much more localized and specific way, running myriad tests that help me account for specific approximations of sediment deposition as part of a larger landscape strategy for the Riachuelo Canal. 

Expect to see many more of these graphs…

This is the excerpt from the 30 minute test run for the analog channel-shape model.  I am still trying to calibrate the flow rate from the pump and decide on the appropriate rate for adding sand to get visible and repeatable results.

Despite the short comings (some leaks, calibrating water and sand flow) it appears that this model will allow for me to test the effects of shape changes (opening a new basin, flushing canal) as well as the distribution of entropy elements (pole fields, wing dams, dredge pits) that I have identified as the implementation strategies meant to allow me to trap sediments while also keeping a shallow navigational trunk line and access channels across the Riachuelo clear.  

You can start to see in this simple test the effects of basins and pits in allowing the settling of suspended sediments and trapping bed load.  After 30 minutes of testing these effects were beginning to manifest.  However, based on the small quantities and the need to see scaled-up results (due to the impossibility of scaling sediment and water, and the exaggerated vertical scale of the model) I plan to set up the experiment to be able to run each test for 2 hours, document it with video and time lapse photos.  I then plan to drain the model and photograph the sediments in their resting location (assuming they don’t move too much during draining) and then collect and weigh the different sediments from each locations to understand proportional deposition.  I think this will then give me information that I can relate back to the matlab shoaling calculator, allowing me to spatialize the data outputs from that computation.

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take a park. excavate a ragged trench in the middle of the pretty lawn. the rocks and pipes and mud that's left and the backhoe ripping in to them? that is landscape instrumentalism.