Hydraulic spillways using the effect of interacting circulation currents

Abstract

The paper is devoted to study of hydraulic characteristics of flow energy dissipators on hydraulic spillways. Transfer to high-head structures requires unconventional approaches to studying the phenomena associated with high-velocity flows and development of fundamentally new kinds of currents and flow energy dissipation designs forming new technological solutions in hydraulic engineering. Considered here is flow energy dissipation with the aid of counter-vortex dissipators based on interacting circulation currents. The objective of the paper consists in justification of effectiveness of operation flow energy dissipator discharged by hydraulic spillways. The analysis was based on physical modeling method. The described flow energy dissipation method based on the work of viscous friction forces allows for excess flow energy to be dissipated in a very short portion of the spillway water conveyance system. The results of the analysis made it possible to state that with counter-cortex flow the energy dissipation coefficient can be very high. It is shown that the proposed approach favorably differs from the known methods of energy dissipation. In the conclusions it is noted that: efficiency of flow energy dissipation at the counter-vortex dissipators can reach 90-98% of the operating head at a length of 6-8 diameters of the mixing chamber.