scholarly journals Stepped spillway flows and air entrainment

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Chanson

Stepped spillways have become a popular method for handling flood releases. The steps significantly increase the rate of energy dissipation taking place on the spillway face and reduce the size of the required downstream energy dissipation basin. The compatibility of stepped spillways with roller compacted concrete and gabion construction techniques results in low additional cost for the spillway. This paper presents a review of recent developments for the design of stepped spillways, provides a discussion of the effects of air entrainment, and presents new calculation methods that take into account the effects of flow aeration on the flow characteristics and the rate of energy dissipation. Key words: stepped spillway, air entrainment, dam, spillway, energy dissipation.

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.


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.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 448
Author(s):  
Najam us Saqib ◽  
Muhammad Akbar ◽  
Huali Pan ◽  
Guoqiang Ou ◽  
Muhammad Mohsin ◽  
...  

In this study, curved risers stepped spillways models based on the increasing angle of suspension were tested to check for improvement in energy dissipation and pressure distributions. Four fourteen-steps stepped spillway models with a slope 1:0.84 were selected, using Froude’s number non-dimensional similarity. The risers of steps were made curved, based on three angles of suspensions, i.e., 30°, 60°, and 90°. The simulations were performed by FLOW 3D software and by the turbulence model Renormalization Group (RNG) for discharges between 0.020 and 0.068 m3/s followed by the model calibration. The 3D Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations were solved, which included sub-grid models for air entrainment, density evaluation, and drift–flux, to capture free-surface flow over the stepped spillway. It was estimated that curving the risers increases the energy dissipation up to three percent for lower flow rates, whereas it has no significant impact on energy dissipation for higher flow rates. It was found that in simply stepped spillway lower steps dissipate more energy as compared to curved risers stepped where energy dissipation is shifted to higher steps. On the other hand, curved risers stepped spillways showed lower values of negative pressures as compared to the simply stepped spillway. It was seen that a higher energy dissipating step as experienced more negative pressures as compared to the lower energy dissipating step.


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.


Entropy ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Xin Ma ◽  
Jianmin Zhang ◽  
Yaan Hu

The water flow characteristics over an interval-pooled stepped spillway are investigated by combining the renormalization group (RNG) k-ε turbulence model with the volume of fluid (VOF) interface capture technique in the present study. The results show that the energy dissipation performance of the interval-pooled stepped spillway was generally better than that of the pooled, stepped spillways and the traditional flat-panel stepped spillway. The omega vortex intensity identification method is introduced to evaluate the energy dissipation. Due to the formation of “pseudo-weir”, the energy dissipation did not increase with the growth of the pool’s height. In addition, the average vortex intensity can characterize the dissipation rate to some extent.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1546-1553
Author(s):  
Yu Zhou ◽  
Jianhua Wu ◽  
Fei Ma ◽  
Jianyong Hu

Abstract In skimming flow, a uniform flow can be achieved and the flow depth, velocity and air concentration remain constant if a stepped spillway is sufficiently long. In this study, physical model experiments were performed to investigate the uniform characteristics and energy dissipation of a hydraulic-jump-stepped spillway, which is a new type of stepped spillway for increasing the unit discharge capacity and energy dissipation. Based on the redefinition of uniform flow, experimental results show that at a given stepped spillway slope, a smaller height for the beginning of the uniform flow region, a greater uniform aerated flow depth and a greater uniform equivalent clear water flow depth can be obtained as compared with the traditional stepped spillway due to strong aeration in the aeration basin. Under the condition of uniform flow, the energy dissipation rate of stepped spillways can be estimated by the equivalent clear water flow depth with given inflow conditions. Compared with the traditional stepped spillway, the uniform flow over the hydraulic-jump-stepped spillway has a smaller specific energy, revealing that the hydraulic-jump-stepped spillway is more advantageous for dissipating energy, especially at large unit discharges.


Author(s):  
Farzin Salmasi ◽  
John Abraham

Abstract Stepped spillways are important water-management structures that are used for energy dissipation. Use of these spillways has increased in recent decades, they can reduce construction time and they are effective for reducing the flow's downstream kinetic energy. In this study, the width and height of the steps as well as the slope and height of the overflow spillway were considered as variables. Due to the large number of variables, non-linearity of the objective function and constraints, and the lack of an explicit relationship between decision variables, a genetic algorithm (GA) was used. A stepped spillway with optimal dimensions was proposed as a replacement of the smooth spillway of Sarogh Dam located in West Azerbaijan province, Iran. The proposed steps increase energy dissipation; for constant discharge and varying slopes, the changes in the optimal height of the steps were insignificant. Sensitivity analysis using the objective function showed that the relative energy dissipation for a constant discharge is independent of the optimal height of the steps and decreases with increasing spillway slope. In addition, for fixed slopes, increasing the flow rate leads to a decrease in relative energy dissipation and an increase in the optimal height of the steps.


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.


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