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Since surface runoff clogs stormwater grates, leading to deterioration of drainage capacity, and also it is difficult to complete the study with actual dimensions in experiments, a numerical simulation work was established in this study to investigate the surface runoff clogging stormwater grate patterns. The purpose of this study is to describe the mechanisms of storm grate clogging and storm well deposition for different flow rate floods and granular materials.

In the work of this study, the volume of fluid (VOF) method and the discrete element method (DEM) are used to solve the gas–liquid and particle flows. In order to solve the evolution of the gas–liquid interface during surface runoff, the VOF was used. To simulate the rain grate and set up different material particles to represent the surface floating materials, the DEM was utilized.

The research results show that the clogging distribution and clogging rate of the rainwater grate are closely related to the fluid flow velocity and the physical characteristics of the particles, and the higher the clogging rate of the rainwater grate and the higher the number of particles deposited in the rainwater well at the same surface runoff velocity, the higher the density of the clogged particles. The surface runoff velocity (0.5 m/s, 1 m/s) shows that the rapid change of particle movement state at high runoff velocity makes the particle clogging more obvious.

A multi-scale CFD-DEM approach was used to simulate the particulate motion of the road surface with different incoming runoff velocities. The innovative use of DEM to model the storm grate simulation ensures the accuracy of the traction model.