Hydraulics of a multiple slit-type energy dissipater

With the constructions of high dam projects in China, the energy dissipation downstream of a dam becomes a serious concern. In this study, a multiple slit-type energy dissipater, with different reduction size slits in the outlet, is developed on the basis of conventional slit-type energy dissipaters, aiming to enhance the energy dissipation through the turbulence and the friction between the different layers of the jet flow and the air entrainment due to the increased surface of the flow to the air. The hydraulic characteristics of the energy dissipater are experimentally investigated by means of three sets of physical models in nine cases, to characterize the geometric parameters with suitable performance. The main concerns are the flow regime, the jet flow trajectory, the energy dissipation, the cavitation characteristics, and the flow choking. The results indicate that the dissipater enjoys a high energy dissipation ratio with suitable hydraulic performance comparing with the conventional slit-type energy dissipaters.

Hydraulics of crest spillway with large unit discharge and low Froude number

With respect to the crest spillway with large unit discharge and low Froude number, the hydraulics of the slit-type energy dissipater at the outlet should be noticed due to the complicated flow regimes. In the present paper, some issues about hydraulic characteristics were experimentally investigated by means of five slit-type outlets and four tetrahedrons, including the flow choking, impact to river banks and jet trajectory. The main findings are as follows. The critical Froude number for the flow choking decreases with increasing outlet width of the slit-type energy dissipater. If the flow Froude number is expressed by the parameters just before this energy dissipater, the tetrahedron placed inside the side wall of the outlet could efficiently avoid the flow impact to the river bank of same side, and compared with the jet trajectory of the slit-type energy dissipater, the outlet with tetrahedron has different trajectory trend, i.e., the distance of the jet trajectory decreases with the increase of the water head due to special form of the outlet tetrahedron.

Ski jump trajectory with consideration of air resistance

In the case of the ski-jump type energy dissipation, the jet trajectory will be greatly affected by the air entrainment and the air resistance. It is necessary to consider those factors when estimating the trajectory of the jet flow. In this work, the effect of the air resistance on the jet trajectory is theoretically and experimentally investigated. A comprehensive resistance coefficient is proposed. To determine this coefficient, experiments of five models are conducted with the circular-shaped flip bucket placed at the point of the takeoff of ski jumps. It is shown that, this coefficient of the lower jet trajectory is only related to the approach flow Froude number, while that of the upper jet trajectory is dominated by both this Froude number and the deflection angle. Furthermore, the present methodology is validated by experimental data in this work and the maximum errors are not larger than 3.2% and 8.6% for the lower and upper jet trajectories, respectively.

Cavity filling water control below aerator devices

With the rapid development of high dam projects within China, the dragon-drop-tail spillway tunnel is introduced and widely used. In view of the high water head and the large flow velocity on the dragon-drop-tail section, aerator devices are usually placed for the cavitation damage control. For the device placed in its initial position, it is a serious concern to design a suitable flow regime of the cavity and to control the cavity filling water due to the large flow depth and the low Froude number through this aerator. In this study, the relationships between the geometries of the aerator device and the jet impact angle of the lower trajectory of the flow are theoretically analyzed with/without a local slope. Nine test cases with different geometries are designed, the effectiveness of the filling water control is experimentally investigated under different operation conditions, and two criteria of the local slope design are proposed. It is concluded that the cavity flow regime and the filling water can be improved if a small impact angle and some suitable geometries of the local slope are designed.