Final Exam – May 14, 2026

PhD in Design, Modeling, and Simulation in Engineering – Final Exam

h 14:00. Entrainment and Deposition of Large Wood in Rivers: Insights from Numerical Modelling, Flume Experiments and Field Observations (Dr. Wafae Ennouini)

Large wood (LW) plays a dual role in river systems: it improves habitat complexity and geomorphic diversity but can also exacerbate flood risks by obstructing flow and damaging infrastructure. Understanding and predicting LW entrainment, transport, and deposition remains a significant challenge due to the complex interplay between hydraulic forces, wood properties, and channel morphology. This thesis contributes to the efforts of modelling of LW dynamics in rivers by developing, validating, and applying an enhanced version of the two-way coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian model ORSA2D_WT. The improved model, which successfully captured the transition between sliding and rolling regimes, has been applied to the analysis of LW dynamics in two natural river systems, the Tagliamento River (Italy) and the Allier River (France), where a field monitoring campaign was also carried out.