Maria Garcia-Serrana defends PhD

PhD candidate Maria Del Carmen Garcia De La Serrana Lozan successfully defended her dissertation in Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering on May 17th, 2017. She is advised by Professor John Gulliver of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering and Professor John Nieber of the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering. Congratulations, Dr. Garcia-Serrana!

Dissertation Title: Analysis of Infiltration and Overland Flow over Sloped Surfaces: Application to Roadside Swales

Environmental impacts and regulatory requirements associated with highway runoff present design challenges. Roadside swales, or drainage ditches, improve water quality by infiltration, filtration, and sedimentation. Road runoff volume reduction through infiltration occurs as water flows over the side slope, acting as a filter strip, or down the length of the swale channel. Therefore, roadside swales are practical solutions that can mitigate the effect that linear transportation projects have on water bodies. This dissertation advances the understanding of the infiltration performance of roadside swales for design and planning purposes. The main objectives of this thesis are: analyzing the overland flow and infiltration processes over a fraction of a slope, relating surface roughness parameters to the fraction of wetted area, and quantifying the effect of equidistant parallel strip water sources on the lateral component of infiltration. Moreover, this research leads to a better understanding of overland flow and infiltration in roadside swales through field experiments and modeling efforts that can simulate how roadside swales operate.