Numerical and experimental models applied to an ogee crest spillway and roller bucket stilling basin

Modelagem numérica e experimental aplicada a um vertedouro de superfície composto por um perfil Creager e um dissipador do tipo roller bucket

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, reduced physical models are used to allow control, instrumentation and experimental evaluation of flow. More recently, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has emerged as a tool that allows numerical modeling of flows and can complement the information provided by the physical model. The objective this paper is to validate the CFD tool in reproducing the flow through an ogee crest spillway with a roller bucket stilling basin. This validation was performed with the data from a reduced scale experiment in which measurements were made of the position of the water free surface and of the pressure loads in the spillway profile. It was verified that the CFD tool is suitable for the study of this type of flow, being able to reproduce the experimental results. In the execution of the numerical simulations, special attention was given to the influence of the mesh on the results. An important influence of the mesh was observed in some results, which shows the importance a sensitivity analysis of this parameter when performing CFD simulations. The obtained results offer the prospect of using CFD as a supporting tool for the design of spillways and stilling basins.

Keywords:
Physical scale model; Computational fluid dynamics; Ogee crest spillway and roller bucket stilling basin