Numerical Simulation of Free Surface in the Case of Plane Turbulent Wall Jets in Shallow Tailwater

Abstract

Wall-jet flow is an important flow field in hydraulic engineering, and its applications include flow from the bottom outlet of dams and sluice gates. In this paper, the plane turbulent wall jet in shallow tailwater is simulated by solving the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations using the standard turbulence closure model. This study aims to explore the ability of a time splitting method on a non-staggered grid in curvilinear coordinates for simulation of two-dimensional (2D) plane turbulent wall jets with finite tailwater depth. In the developed model, the kinematic free-surface boundary condition is solved simultaneously with the momentum and continuity equations, so that the water surface elevation can be obtained along with the velocity and pressure fields as part of the solution. 2D simulations are carried out for plane turbulent wall jets free surface in shallow tailwater. The comparison undertaken between numerical results and experimental measurements show that the numerical model can capture the velocity field and the drop in the water surface elevation at the gate with reasonable accuracy.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• free surface
• shallow tailwater
• turbulent flow
• water jets