Analysis of retaining walls along the Beas River’s meandering curve

Abstract

In the field of river engineering, complex flow behavior emerges at acute bends in waterways such as rivers or streams. Thus, understanding the flow structure, especially along the banks, is critical. Due to the river's turbulence, obtaining all necessary details through field observation and lab experiments is challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a common approach used to predict flow behavior and analyze water retention structures. The site of the meandering bend of the Beas River is located in Mandi town, in the Mandi district of H.P. The geometry of the site is curvilinear, and a retaining wall is to be constructed there. The retaining wall along the left side of the river is 490 m long, while the right-side wall is 495 m. The river's inlet width is 90 m, and the outlet width is 95 m. The channel depth is 5 m, and the channel geometry bed slope is constant throughout the river's length [1]. The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved using the standard k-ω turbulent model, and numerical simulations are performed using ANSYS FLUID FLUENT. The results indicate that as the length of the retaining wall increases, the wall shear stress increases up to a certain length, then decreases towards the outlet. Additionally, the inner bank, or convex side, of the meandering curve always has a higher longitudinal velocity, while the inner side, or concave side, has a lower longitudinal velocity [2].