Energy dissipation performance of labyrinth and harmonic stepped spillways

Abstract

ABSTRACT Stepped spillways are structures that dissipate the energy on steps, especially in topography, where building the energy dissipate pool is impossible as long as required. For this reason, stepped spillways are one of the critical topics that have attracted the attention of researchers for many years. It has been the subject of many studies, especially because the step geometry is an effective parameter in the energy dissipation rate. In this study, the effect of the labyrinth and harmonic geometry on the plan on energy dissipation performance is examined using the open-source OpenFOAM software. The 11 different geometries were analyzed in detail and discussed with the literature results. For analysis, the k − ω SST turbulence model and the multi-phase solver interFoam were utilized. The results showed that the number of cycles is an effective parameter for energy dissipation performance; the energy dissipation rate increases when effective crest length increases, and labyrinth and harmonic models could dissipate about 20% more energy than the flat model.