Experimental and Numerical Study of Open Channel Flow with T-Section Artificial Bed Roughness

Abstract

Experimental and numerical studies have been conducted on the effects of bed roughness elements such as cubic and T-section elements that are regularly half-channel arrayed on one side of the river on turbulent flow characteristics and bed erosion downstream of the roughness elements. The experimental study has been done for two types of bed roughness elements (cubic and T-section shape) to study the effect of these elements on the velocity profile downstream the elements with respect to different water flow discharges and water depths. A comparison between the cubic and T-section artificial bed roughness showed that the velocity profile downstream the T-section increased in smooth side from the river and decrease in the rough side from it compared with the case when a cubic artificial bed roughness is used. By comparing the results for the element shapes, it can be notices that the T-section bed roughness element more effective compared to cubic shape for both sides of the channel. The numerical method has been done using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) method. A validation for the CFD model with the experimental study have been carried out for a specific flow discharge and water depth. The results indicated that the velocity distribution profiles downstream the bed roughness elements in both sides shown very good agreement for manning coefficients between the numerical and experimental studies. The range of errors between the experimental and numerical study have been calculated using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) approach, which is found that the RMSE is approximately equal to 1 in case of cubic bed roughness and the RMSE is about 1.5 in case of T-section bed roughness for both smooth and rough sides. Furthermore, the influence of the velocity profile and the bed erosion downstream of the T-section element under the effect of tides have been investigated using the CFD method, which is commonly happened in Shat al-Arab south of Iraq. The results show that the tide of the flow has a reverse effect on the velocity profiles for both sides. Since the velocity profile downstream of bed roughness region increase in the rough side and decrease in the smooth side compared with the normal flow of the river.