Model Experiment Exploration of the Kinetic Dissipation Effect on the Slit Dam with Baffles Tilted in the Downstream Direction

Abstract

Slit dams can eliminate the risk of particle overload accumulation, which can be safer in controlling debris flow compared with a completely closed dam. In attempting to better use the energy dissipation effect of particle collision and reduce the impact of the dam body, referring to the traditional slit dam, this paper proposed one with tilted baffles in the downstream direction. Discrete element simulation and several flume model experiments were carried out herein to verify the advantages and explore the applicable conditions of this tilted baffle slit dam, in which the particle trapping efficiency and the change law of impact force of the tilted baffles under the conditions of different inclined angles, opening sizes, and particle sizes were studied. The results show that: 1. when the inclination angle is 30° ≤ θ ≤ 45°, the tilted baffles can dissipate more particle kinetic energy than the transverse baffles; 2. the maximum impact force and trapping efficiency of the tilted baffles decrease with the increase in the width diameter ratio b/d, with the opening width b of the slit to the particle diameter d; 3. with the given particle size of 6 mm ≤ d ≤ 14 mm, the range that the tilted baffles can effectively intercept the particles flowing down is 0 ≤ b/d ≤ 4, and it reaches the ideal interception state near 1 ≤ b/d ≤ 2, where, relatively, the impact force is weak, and the interception efficiency is high.