Hydraulic performance of sluice gate with unloaded upstream rotor

Abstract

This study presents video analysis of the hydraulic performance of a sluice gate with an unloaded upstream built-in rotor. A number of laboratory experiments were conducted using two unloaded rotor shapes. The first was the cross-shaped rotor and the second was the Savonius-like rotor. A new video analysis technique was introduced for measuring rotor angular speed and its perturbation. Swift speed cameras and Tracker software were used to measure the upstream backwater depth and to estimate the instantaneous variation of the rotor speed. The study shows that adding a rotor upstream of the gate caused the upstream water level to increase such that the averaged normalized afflux increased to 1.72 and 0.9 for the cross-shaped and the Savonius rotors, respectively. Lab experiments indicated that the water flow–structure interaction for the sluice-rotor is quite complex and nonlinear. Two main flow regimes were distinguished. The flow regimes are: the flow through a rotor with possible weir flow conditions and the orifice flow conditions.

Authors

Categories