Numerical modeling of flow pattern in dam spillway’s guide wall. Case study: Balaroud dam, Iran

Abstract

Flow pattern recognition using the physical modeling and numerical simulation helps designers to propose optimal shape for hydraulics structures. Optimal shape of hydraulic structure causes increasing their performance. In this study, the effect of geometries of guide walls on the flow pattern and rating curve of Balaroud dam spillway’s (Iran) was simulated using numerical and physical simulation. Numerical simulation of flow pattern through the guide walls was carried out using Flow 3D software as computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tool. To this task, three plans for the guide walls were evaluated. The results showed that the plan (3) has best performance for removing cross waves and smoothly passing the flow through the approach channel and over the spillway. Evaluating the turbulence models showed that the RNG-K-epsilon becomes the best performance to show the cross waves.