scholarly journals NUMERICAL STUDY OF TURBULENT FLOW FOR MODERATE-SLOPE STEPPED SPILLWAYS

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bentalha Chakib

Stepped spillway is a power full hydraulic structure for energy dissipation because ofthe large value of the surface roughness. The performance of the stepped spillway is enhancedwith the presence of air that can prevent or reduce the cavitation damage. This work aims tosimulate air entrainment and determine the characteristics of flow at stepped spillways. Withinthis work flow over stepped chute is simulated by using fluent computational fluid dynamics(CFD). The volume of fluid (VOF) model is used as a tool to simulate air-water interaction onthe free surface thereby the turbulence closure is derived in the k −ε turbulence standard model.The found numerical results agree well with experimental results.

RBRH ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Kuhn Novakoski ◽  
Rute Ferla ◽  
Maurício Dai Prá ◽  
Alba Valéria Brandão Canellas ◽  
Marcelo Giulian Marques ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Stepped spillways aim to dissipate part of the upstream energy during the flow passage by the chute. However, the use of these structures is limited to a restrict range of specific discharges due to the risk of cavitation damage. As the air entrainment into the flow assists the concrete protection against the aforementioned damages, a possible solution by aerators installed along the chute, already disseminated to smooth chutes, is being studied to be used also in stepped spillways. The purpose of the present paper is to characterize a flow over a stepped chute with induced aeration by deflector and air supply by an airtight chamber trough tests conducted on a reduced scale physical model. The main regions observed during the tests are presented and were developed four equations that allow to approximately predict the location of the main regions for a given spillway.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48
Author(s):  
Chakib Bentalha ◽  
Mohammed Habi

Abstract Stepped spillway is hydraulic structure designed to dissipate the excess in kinetic energy at the downstream of dams and can reduce the size of stilling basin at the toe of the spillway or chute. The flow on a stepped spillway is characterised by the large aeration that can prevent or reduce the cavitation damage. The air entrainment starts where the boundary layer attains the free surface of flow; this point is called “point of inception”. Within this work the inception point is determined by using software Ansys Fluent where the volume of fluid (VOF) model is used as a tool to track the free surface thereby the turbulence closure is derived in the k − ε turbulence standard model. This research aims to find new formulas for describe the variation of water depth at step edge and the positions of the inception point, at the same time the contour map of velocity, turbulent kinetic energy and strain rate are presented. The found numerical results agree well with experimental results like the values of computed and measured water depth at the inception point and the numerical and experimental inception point locations. Also, the dimensionless water depth profile obtained by numerical method agrees well with that of measurement. This study confirmed that the Ansys Fluent is a robust software for simulating air entrainment and exploring more characteristics of flow over stepped spillways.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Luna-Bahena ◽  
Oscar Pozos-Estrada ◽  
Víctor Ortiz-Martínez ◽  
Jesús Gracia-Sánchez

Crest piers placed on overflow spillways induce standing waves at the downstream end of them and the supercritical flow expands after flowing past the rear of the pier. The expanding flow from each side of a pier will intersect and form disturbances or shock waves that travel laterally as they move downstream and eventually reach the chute sidewalls. Recently, investigations regarding crest piers are related with artificial aeration on stepped spillways to eliminate the risk of cavitation damage. However, there is a lack of studies on standing and shock waves in smooth spillways concerning the air entrainment into the flow in presence of crest piers. This paper presents the study of the combined effect on air entrainment of a crest pier and an aerator on the bottom of a smooth spillway (configuration 1). For comparison, experimental tests were developed in the spillway without pier, that is in presence of aerator only (configuration 2). The configuration 1 results show that the air concentration distribution on the spillway bottom across the width and length of the chute increases in comparison with configuration 2, reducing even more the risk of cavitation damage and enhancing the safety of the hydraulic structure.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 710
Author(s):  
Amir Ghaderi ◽  
Saeed Abbasi ◽  
Silvia Di Francesco

This work presents numerical simulations carried out to study the influence of geometric characteristics of pooled steps on the energy dissipation performance, flow patterns properties, velocity rates, and pressure distributions over a spillway. The localization of the inception point of air entrainment was also assessed, being a key design parameter of spillways. With this aim, different configurations of steps were taken in account, including flat, pooled, and notch pooled types. The computational procedure was first validated with experimental results from the literature and then used to test the hydraulic behavior derived from different geometric configurations. The flat step configuration showed the best energy dissipation performance as compared with other configurations. With the notched pooled step configuration, the efficiency performance of the pooled structure improved by about 5.8%. The interfacial velocities of the flat stepped spillway were smaller than those of the pooled structure. The pressure value at the beginning of the step in the pooled configuration was larger than the flat configuration, while for the notched pool the maximum pressure values decreased near the step pool. Pool configuration (simple or notched) did not have a significant influence on the location of air entrainment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 2091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wuyi Wan ◽  
Awais Raza ◽  
Xiaoyi Chen

Air entrainment in a stepped spillway is very important to protect the spillway from cavitation damage. The inception point is the location where air starts entering the non-aerated flow zone. The inception point location depends on different parameters, such as the discharge, step height, and step shape. In this paper, various stepped spillways, including flat steps, pooled steps, and round steps with different step heights were numerically simulated using the volume of fluid and realizable k-ε models. The results indicate that the inception point location moves downwards with the increase of the discharge of the stepped spillways. The length of the non-aerated flow zone increases with the discharge. The inception point location moves downwards as the step height decreases and the step number increases at the same discharge. The inception point location of the round stepped spillway model is much closer to the spillway crest than that of the flat stepped spillway with the same number of steps. The inception point location of the pooled stepped spillway is closer to the spillway crest than that of the flat stepped spillway, but more downstream than that of the round stepped spillway.


Author(s):  
Aytaç Güven ◽  
Ahmed Hussein Mahmood

Abstract Spillways are constructed to evacuate the flood discharge safely not to let the flood wave overtop the dam body. There are different types of spillways, ogee type being the conventional one. Stepped spillway is an example of nonconventional spillways. The turbulent flow over stepped spillway was studied numerically by using the Flow-3D package. Different fluid flow characteristics such as longitudinal flow velocity, temperature distribution, density and chemical concentration can be well simulated by Flow-3D. In this study, the influence of slope changes on flow characteristics such as air entrainment, velocity distribution and dynamic pressures distribution over the stepped spillway was modelled by Flow-3D. The results from the numerical model were compared with the experimental study done by others in the literature. Two models of the stepped spillway with different discharge for each model was simulated. The turbulent flow in the experimental model was simulated by the Renormalized Group (RNG) turbulence scheme in the numerical model. A good agreement was achieved between the numerical results and the observed ones, which were exhibited in terms of graphics and statistical tables.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Chanson ◽  
L Toombes

Stepped spillways have been used for about 3500 years. The last few decades have seen the development of new construction materials, design techniques, and applications, for example, embankment overtopping protection systems. Although it is commonly acknowledged that free-surface aeration is significant in stepped chutes, experimental data are scarce, often limited to very steep slopes (α ~ 50°). This paper presents an experimental study conducted in a large-size stepped chute (α = 22°, h = 0.1 m, W = 1 m). Observations demonstrate the existence of a transition flow pattern for intermediate flow rates between nappe and skimming flows. Detailed air–water flow measurements were conducted in both transition and skimming flows, immediately downstream of the inception point of free-surface aeration where uniform equilibrium flow conditions were not achieved. In skimming flows, a complete characterization is developed for the distributions of void fraction, bubble count rate, and velocity, and flow resistance data are compared with other studies. Transition flows exhibit significantly different air–water flow properties. They are highly aerated, requiring the design of comparatively high chute sidewalls.Key words: stepped spillway, air entrainment, two-phase flow properties, skimming flow, transition flow.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (23) ◽  
pp. 5071
Author(s):  
Abdelwanees Ashoor ◽  
Amin Riazi

A stepped spillway, which is defined as a spillway with steps on the chute, can be used to improve the energy dissipation of descending water. Although uniform stepped spillways have been studied comprehensively, non-uniform stepped spillways need more attention. In the interest of maximum energy dissipation, in this study, non-uniform stepped spillways were investigated numerically. To this end, within the range of skimming flow, four different types of non-uniform step lengths, including convex, concave, random, and semi-uniform configurations, were tested in InterFOAM. To evaluate the influence of non-uniform step lengths on energy dissipation, the height and number of steps in all models were fixed and equal to a constant number. The results indicated that in semi-uniform stepped spillways, when the ratio between the lengths of the successive steps is 1:3, a vortex interference region occurs within the two adjacent cavities of the entire stepped chute, and as a result, the energy dissipation increases by up to 20%.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Prafull Wadhai ◽  
Aniruddha Ghare ◽  
Narendra Deshpande ◽  
Avinash Vasudeo

For a dam system with inadequate capacity of spillway, provision of (RCC) roller compacted concrete stepped spillways with converging training walls prove to be an appropriate alternative. Sufficient number of guidelines and literature references are available on the design of straight side walled stepped spillways. The need was felt to conduct the experiments on stepped spillways with convergent training walls, as limited literature is available. This paper presents the comparative analysis of an experimentation conducted on flow over convergent stepped spillways having 1:1 chute slope with 45o convergence angle for different step height ratios leading to different step height variations. The findings are presented in the form of expressions for the maximum depth of flow through the training walls required to accommodate the flow rate. The observed maximum depth of flow along the training walls also compared with estimated maximum height of the training wall as per the criteria available within literature and percentage variation is worked out taking into account the step height variation. Outcomes of the experimental findings are expected to be useful for assessment of height of training walls by the hydraulic design engineers involved in rehabilitation of existing dam system and also in design of the modified spillway system that is necessarily associated with convergent training walls and stepped chute.


Author(s):  
Xiaoliang Qu ◽  
Lyes Khezzar ◽  
Zhenlin Li

This paper presents a three-dimensional unsteady numerical simulation of a turbulent plunging liquid jet without artificial surface disturbance impinging on a quiecent liquid pool. The focal point of the study is the initial impact and air entrainment process. The multiphase, Volume of Fluid Model is used in combination with the Reynolds Averaged k-ε turbulence model. The process of the initial impact of the jet on the free surface, the subsequent formation of an air cavity and the subsequent break-down of the cavity into small bubbles are captued and analyzed. These simulations show clearly and in detail the process of air carryunder by the liquid-liquid jet. The air cavity caused by the intial jet impact stretches deeply under the pool surface untill break down due to the shear created by a torroidal vortex. The predicted maximum height of the developing air cavity shows very good agreement with existing semi-empirical correlations from the literature and experiments. The velocity of the front of the air cavity is equal to about half the jet valocity at impact as shown by previous works and the predicted penetration depth shows acceptable agreement with previous correlations. The VOF model shows a strong capability of tracking the interface between two phases.


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