Modeling hydrodynamic flow over spillway using weakly compressible flow equations

Spillway hydrodynamics can be obtained through physical modeling or numerical modeling. Physical modeling of spillway is expensive, cumbersome and time consuming. Numerical simulation of rapidly varied, supercritical, free surface turbulent flow over spillway with all flow regimes is a challenging task. This paper explains the formulation and development of a numerical model based on weakly compressible flow equations for flow over spillway. The developed model is used to investigate the hydraulic characteristics of flow over spillway crest profile by simulating the velocity distribution, pressure distribution and discharge characteristics. The developed numerical model was applied to the two different types of spillways. First spillway studied is a surface spillway with broad crested parabolic downstream crest profile. The second spillway investigated is sluice spillway, which is a submerged type of spillway. The numerical results were compared with the respective physical model results. Good agreement is observed between the experimental and numerical results showing the applicability of the weakly compressible flow equations for the hydrodynamics simulation of flow over spillways