Numerical Simulation of Energy Dissipation in Crescent-Shaped Contraction of the Flow Path

One of the methods of controlling and reducing flow energy is to use energy dissipating structures through formation of hydraulic jumps. One of these types of structures is the constriction elements in the flow path, which leads to a decrease in the energy of the passing flow. In the present study, the effect of crescent-shaped contraction as an energy dissipating structure in the supercritical flow path has been investigated using FLOW-3D software. Examining the simulation results, the RNG model among the four turbulence models, RNG, k-ε, k-ω and LES was selected due to its higher accuracy and lower relative error and absolute error percentage. In this study, the amplitude of the Froude number after the gate as the most effective dimensionless parameter in energy dissipation varied from 2.8 to 7.5 and the values of stenosis on both sides are 5 and 7.5 cm. The results show that in all cases of using the crescent-shaped contractions, the energy dissapation in 5 and 7.5 cm contractions are respectively 24.62% and 29.84% more than the ones in the classic free jump, based on the energy drop relative to the upstream, and 46.14% and 48.42% more, based on the energy drop relative to the downstream. Also, by reviewing the previous researchs, it was found that the crescent-shaped contractions have a better performance in terms of energy loss compared to the sudden contraction. Based on the simulation results, with increasing the upstream Froude number, the energy dissipation is increased relative to the upstream and downstream of crescent-shaped contraction, so that the use of contraction elements reduces the downstream Froude number of the contracted section in the range of 1.6 to 3/2.