K-State hydraulic engineering students recreate, study New Orleans levee failure caused by Hurricane Katrina

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Source: David R. Steward, 785-532-1585, steward@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Keener A. Tippin II, 785-532-6415

Thursday, June 1, 2006

K-STATE HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING STUDENTS RECREATE, STUDY NEW ORLEANS LEVEE FAILURE CAUSED BY HURRICANE KATRINA

MANHATTAN -- As the 2006 hurricane season draws near, anxious residents of New Orleans keep one eye to the sky and another on the reconstruction of the Crescent City's levee system. The system collapsed last year in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Students at Kansas State University's College of Engineering are trying to determine the cause of the system's collapse. This spring, students in David Steward's hydraulics engineering course built model levees in an attempt to understand the mechanisms of the failure.

"We did a number of searches on the Internet to try and understand why it failed, where it failed, the basic design of the system," Steward said. "From there, the students tried to develop a hands-on demonstration of levees to understand the mechanisms."

According to Steward, through the models and from talks, the students discovered, as did officials in New Orleans, that much of the failure can be attributed to soil on the backside of the levees becoming wet and losing cohesion and stability. In turn, the water pushed over the top of the levees, causing them to collapse.

"The collapse was caused by the same kind of mechanisms we observed in our experiment," Steward said. "The levees in New Orleans were constructed with sand and had concrete structures that came out of the middle. We used sand and a piece of plywood to simulate the concrete and filled it up with water on the backside. You could see the water as the soil became liquefied and just lost all of its cohesion."

A researcher from the Netherlands Institute of Inland Water Management, Willem de Lange, who is at K-State on sabbatical, worked with students. In his talk to the class, de Lange used examples of levees that had failed in the Netherlands.

"It was kind of an interesting experiment from their standpoint," Steward said "They're really enjoyed the fact that we had a international expert come to the class and talk about it. Overall I think it was a pretty good experience for us."

According to Steward, no recommendations will be provided to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the students' findings.

'"It's not to understand what should have been done differently there, but to better understand more completely what did happen," he said.

The study of the effects of Katrina was not the first natural disaster Steward's students have studied. In 2005 the students studied how tsunamis form in the wake of the deadly 2004 Sumatra tsunami.

"We try to make it relevant to the students," Steward said. "It's a lot of fun. The students really appreciate the practical application of water and fluids to controlling water and developing structure."