J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory Overview

The Federal Highway Administration's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory provides a means of testing the hydraulic performance of highway drainage structures and stream crossings, including the hydraulics of bridges, culverts, and storm sewers. The purpose of the laboratory is to solve hydraulic and stream stability problems attendant to highways and to support highway engineers with design guidance and tools. The TFHRC J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory is situated in the Turner building of the TFHRC complex in McLean, Virginia.

The Federal Highway Administration's J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.

The J. Sterling Jones Hydraulics Research Laboratory consists of both physical and numerical modeling components used in concert with each other. The main assets of the laboratory include a main flume, mini-flumes, a culvert hydraulics experimental setup, a force balance, along with equipment and methods to make experimental measurements and collect experimental data.

• The physical modeling facility has a total pumping capacity of 6000 gal/min with variable-frequency drives capable of simulating inflow hydrographs. This laboratory features a 6-ft-wide by 70-ft-long tilting flume capable of simulating 13 percent longitudinal and cross slopes. The flume has a sediment recess for local scour modeling.  This laboratory also includes a culvert testing facility for evaluating entrance loss coefficients for various types of culvert inlets.
• The mini-flume can be set up for 2-D experiments while the junction loss and the mini-culvert setups are equipped to handle 3-D experiments.
• The force balance flume is used in measuring drag and lift forces.
• The numerical modeling capability features a 3-D sediment transport model capable of reproducing scour results and can be used very effectively to extend those results to field conditions that could never be attained in a physical laboratory.

Understanding hydraulics and hydrology as they apply to highway structures is a necessity for the proper design of bridges and other drainage structures especially during extreme events such as major floods and washouts.

Use this site to learn about research at the TFHRC Hydraulics Laboratory, download available research results, and link to related information sources elsewhere on the World Wide Web.

Find out more about the laboratory's facilities using these links:

• Facilities
• Personnel
• Physical Modeling
• Numerical Modeling

The three experimental setups in the FHWA Hydraulic Lab which are capable of handling Particle Imagery Velocimetry (PIV).