A Novel Numerical Experiments and Investigation on Energy Dissipation over Stepped Chute

Abstract

Stepped spillways are a typical configuration that is used for releasing water and floods from an embankment dam. Moreover, the stepped chute helps to enhance energy dissipation. Stepped spillways have been investigated for more than three decades and in more advanced studies the flow over spillway has been investigated by numerical methods. In this paper, three models of stepped chutes, including flat steps, quarter cut steps, and Half- cut steps were numerically simulated using InterFOAM solver in the OpenFOAM package. The volume of fluid (VOF) method was employed to determine the position of the free surface, and the Realizable k-ε was used as turbulence model. The results indicate that, among all the configurations,  ​the half cut steps were the most effective, such that the energy dissipation was improved up to 8%. Moreover, it was observed that, when discharges increased, the energy dissipation rate decreased as it entered a phase where the impact of the shape of the steps was little.