Determination of capacity of labyrinth side weir by CFD

Abstract

Side weirs are widely used in irrigation, land drainage, urban sewage systems, flood protection, and forebay pool of hydropower systems by flow diversion or intake devices. The hydraulic behavior of side weirs received considerable interest by many researchers. A large number of these studies are physical model tests of rectangular side weirs. However, in the study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models together with laboratory models of labyrinth side weirs were used for determining the discharge capacity of the labyrinth side weir located on the straight channel. The discharges performances obtained from CFD analyses were compared with the observed results for various Froude number, dimensionless nappe height, dimensionless weir width, and weir included angle. The results obtained from both methods are in a good agreement.