INTRODUCTION
Given the ongoing coastal erosion and land-loss crisis in southern Louisiana, the significance of maximizing the amount of suspended sediment that reaches the coast flowing via the Mississippi & Atchafalaya Rives plays a key role in protecting and improving the ecological well being of the region. The advancement of methodologies that prevent sediment fall and improve transfer would benefit various ecological functions including the creating of new marshes, restoring barrier islands, and aiding sediment starved wetlands [1]. The hypothesis of this proposal suggests that through strategically activating the riverbed, water currents carrying sediment can be heavily influenced to induce and perpetuate the amount of sediment transferred in the state of suspension. Through deploying a network of adaptive and responsive soft robots along the riverbed, tactically located before and after sediment diversions channels throughout the rivers, the transfer of such sediment can be strategically enhanced.
Studies:
Cymatics & Turbidity Experiment Video:
The methodology of the project begins with a series of experiments that examine the kinetic effect that varying frequencies of sounds have on physical particles and on water at various salinities and viscosities. The kinetic properties of suspended sediment are used as a basis from which to design the mobility and adaptability of the soft robotic network.
Credits –
Sole Contributor:
Ricardo Jnani Gonzalez
Affiliated Professor:
Bradley Cantrell. Harvard Graduate School of Design
Contributing Professors:
Richard Hindle. U.C. Berkeley
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