The Hydraulic Assessment of Side Weir using 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics Program

The objectives of this study are to analyze flow characteristics for a side weir, which is an inlet structure for flow discharge reduction in the main channel through 3 dimensional numerical analysis and to understand the efficiency of the overflow effect at the side weir. In this study over 40 simulations using FLOW-3D, a computational fluid dynamics program were conducted, and the results were analyzed to find the influence of the flow hydraulics, geometry, channel and weir shapes on the coefficient. It is especially considered the relatively high stage in downstream that may cause flow within channel to be backed up along the channel. Additionally by setting up the scale of simulations much larger than the existing test equipment designed by other researchers, it is intended to analyze more accurate hydraulic behavior along with the realistic hydraulic features such as structures and volumes of flow. The results show that for design with subcritical flow only if the Froude number of upstream is sustained below 0.5 and the length of weir is 33-100% of the width of channel, it is expected to improve the efficiency of the overflow over a side weir.