scholarly journals Numerical study of energy dissipation and block barriers in stepped spillways

Author(s):  
Mehdi Karami Moghadam ◽  
Ata Amini ◽  
Ehsan Karami Moghadam

Abstract In this research, the accuracy of the Flow-3D numerical model in the flow simulation in a stepped spillway was probed using data obtained from the physical model. In addition, the effects of block barriers on the energy dissipation rate were investigated. To adopt a proper turbulent model, Renormalization Group k-ε, RNG k-ε, and standard k-ε models were employed. Then, the Flow-3D was run in five discharges for nine spillways with the ratios of block length to step length (Lb/l) and block height to step height (Hb/h) as 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5. The results indicated that both turbulent models had almost similar outcomes though the run time of the RNG k-ε model was shorter. The blocks with a shorter length in low ratios of Hb/h and the lengthier blocks in high ratios of Hb/h undergo more relative energy dissipation relative to the no-block situation. For Hb/h = 0.3 and Lb/l equal to 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5, the relative energy dissipation climbed on average as 8.5, 6.5, and 4.5% respectively, compared with the no-block case. The most influence exerted on relative energy dissipation was obtained via the blocks with Hb/h = Lb/l equal to 0.3 and 0.5 with respective increases of 8.6 and 8.4%.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Shawnm M. Saleh ◽  
Sarhang M. Husain

The main features that attract hydraulic engineers for designing stepped spillways are their ability to lose a large portion of the flow energy and add or increase aeration to the flow naturally. Hence, smaller size stilling basin and no aeration device may require. This study aims to find the amount of energy dissipation rate and the location of inception point over non-uniform stepped spillway. The numerical 2D ANSYS-CFX code is applied to generate and run thirty-two models of different configurations using two different moderate slopes (1 V:2 H and 1 V:2.5 H) as most of the downstream slopes designed for moderate slope, and two different step heights (hs= 0.08 m and hs= 0.016 m) under skimming flow discharge for different (dc/hs) ranging from dc/hs= 1–2.2, in which dc is the critical flow deptho n the crest. The volume of fluid is implemented and the renormalized group of k-ɛ turbulence model is activated. The computational results demonstrated that the amount of energy dissipation increases with decreasing the flow discharge, chute slope, and step height. In addition, it is observed that the length of the inception point is directly proportional to the discharge and inversely proportional to both the chute slopes and step height. Moreover, for the design point of view, the results revealed that configuration B can be considered as the optimal one amongst the others examined herein.


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.


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%.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shicheng Li ◽  
Jianmin Zhang

Pooled stepped spillway is known for high aeration efficiency and energy dissipation, but the understanding for the effects of pool weir configuration on the flow properties and energy loss is relatively limited, so RNG k − ε εturbulence model with VOF method was employed to simulate the hydraulic characteristics of the stepped spillways with four types of pool weirs. The calculated results suggested the flow in the stepped spillway with staggered configuration of` two-sided pooled and central pooled steps (TP-CP) was highly three dimensional and created more flow instabilities and vortex structures, leading to 1.5 times higher energy dissipation rate than the fully pooled configuration (FP-FP). In FP-FP configuration, the stepped spillway with fully pooled and two-sided pooled steps (FP-TP) and the spillway with fully pooled and central pooled steps (FP-CP), the pressure on the horizontal step surfaces presented U-shaped variation, and TP-CP showed the greatest pressure fluctuation. For FP-TP and FP-CP, the vortex development in the transverse direction presented the opposite phenomenon, and the maximum vortex intensity in TP-CP occurred at Z/W = 0.25, while FP-FP illustrated no significant change in the transverse direction. The overlaying flow velocity distribution in the spanwise direction demonstrated no obvious difference among FP-FP, FP-TP, and FP-CP, while the velocity in TP-CP increased from the axial plane to the sidewalls, but the maximum velocity for all cases were approximately the same.


Author(s):  
Erdinc Ikinciogullari ◽  

Stepped spillways are a more effective type of spillway in energy dissipation than conventional chute channels. Therefore, the dimensions of the energy breaker at the downstream of the stepped spillways are lower. It is an alternative especially for the downstream pool that cannot be built in sufficient length due to the terrain conditions. In this study, the energy dissipation performance of the trapezoidal stepped spillways was investigated numerically by using Flow3D software. Four different models and three different discharges were utilized for this aim. According to the results, the trapezoidal stepped spillway is more effective up to 30% than classical stepped spillways in energy dissipation. The depth of the trapezoidal step and the bottom base length of the trapezoid significantly affected the energy dissipation rate for the trapezoidal stepped spillway.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 4469
Author(s):  
Peng ◽  
Zhang ◽  
Yuan ◽  
Li ◽  
Xie ◽  
...  

Energy dissipation is one of the most important factors in choosing stepped spillways. However, very few studies have investigated energy dissipation with different horizontal face angles. In this paper, the realizable k-ε turbulent model was used to study the flow field, energy dissipation rates and turbulent kinetic energy and its dissipation rate for different stepped spillways with five horizontal face angles in the skimming flow regions. Results showed that the field and direction of the flow were changed by the horizontal face angles of the stepped spillway, which produced some unique characteristics and thus caused better energy dissipation. The fluctuation of free water surface will be larger with increasing horizontal face angles and the energy dissipation rate decreases with an increasing unit discharge and increases for the enlargement of the horizontal face angles. This conclusion could provide a reference for the relevant research of V shaped stepped spillways.


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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Denik Sri Krisnayanti ◽  
Soehardjono Soehardjono ◽  
Very Dermawan ◽  
Mohammad Sholichin

The stepped spillway has increasingly become effective energy dissipation. The stepped spillway has been accepted to be the most powerful hydraulic structure to dissipate large flow energy downstream from spillway crest. The steps act as roughness elements significantly increase the dissipation energy rate. The physical study has performed on flat and pooled stepped spillways with a slope spillway    (θ = 45˚) and number of steps (N): 20 and 40. The experiments were conducted for ten Froude number (Fr) run ranging from 1.117 to 9.909 with 0.700<yc/h<3.00. The focus of research to investigate the relationship between relative energy losses in skimming flow performance against Froude number on various stepped. The effect of number of steps is evident when the relative energy loss increases with the number of steps. In addition, the relative energy loss of flow on pooled steps is dissipating more energy than flat steps.


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.


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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