Channel Slope Effect on Energy Dissipation of Flow over Broad Crested Weirs

Abstract

The main purpose of broad crested weir used in open channels is to raise and control upstream (U/S) water level. In this study, a new performance was added to this weir, by making a step at downstream (D/S) of weir. The energy dissipation, the height of the weir/the upstream water height ratio and Froude number relationships (E% – P/h – Fr) for three range of flume slop S = 0.0, 0.002 and 0.004 were simulated. The experiments were performed in a laboratory horizontal channel of 4.6 m length, 0.3 m width and 0.3 m depth for a wide range of discharge. The D/S step height of the weir was 7.5 cm. FLUENT software was used as numerical model which represent a type of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model in order to simulate flow over weirs. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method with the Standard k – ε turbulence model was used to estimate the free surface profile and the structured mesh with high concentration near the wall regions. The experimental results of the water surface profile gave a high agreement with the results of the numerical models. The maximum value 28.78 of E% was obtained in single step broad crested weir in the experimental result and 27.35 in numerical result at S = 0.004. Finally, the range of the relative error of the energy dissipation between experimental and numerical results was achieved and the maximum was 6.76 in all runs.