Smoothed particle hydrodynamics method for analysis of turbulent flows in hydropower facilities

Abstract

Weakly Compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) method for calculating free-surface flows has been applied to compute the characteristics of flows and the motion of solid objects in natural rivers and around hydraulic structures. The basic method is catered to be used to analyze flows in hydropower facilities and in neighboring river system which are highly turbulent and of large scales. All elements of the computation are implemented in an in-house software and its performances are compared with experiments. The turbulence models are incorporated as the sub-particle eddy viscosity and the wall model in the in-house code which solve the commonly encountered problem of stability in high-Reynolds number real-scale flows. It is shown that flows over spillway and downstream flip bucket of typical hydropower facility can be calculated well. It is due to the improved representation of the turbulent viscosity, diffusion and the wall boundary conditions. A few examples related to hydropower facilities are shown.Weakly Compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) method for calculating free-surface flows has been applied to compute the characteristics of flows and the motion of solid objects in natural rivers and around hydraulic structures. The basic method is catered to be used to analyze flows in hydropower facilities and in neighboring river system which are highly turbulent and of large scales. All elements of the computation are implemented in an in-house software and its performances are compared with experiments. The turbulence models are incorporated as the sub-particle eddy viscosity and the wall model in the in-house code which solve the commonly encountered problem of stability in high-Reynolds number real-scale flows. It is shown that flows over spillway and downstream flip bucket of typical hydropower facility can be calculated well. It is due to the improved representation of the turbulent viscosity, diffusion and the wall boundary conditions. A few examples related to hydropower facilities...