Numerical simulations of turbulent and flow characteristics of complex river reach in Pakistan

Abstract

The study included the numerical simulation of a curved open channel flow of Chashma Barrage for different velocities along left & right river banks, and water depths downstream of the river reach. The physical model was constructed in one of the experimental trays at the Irrigation Research Institute. Different trials were carried out at low, medium, and high discharges after the calibration of the physical model. A 2D computational fluid dynamics ANSYS FLUENT software was used to simulate various turbulences and flow properties for various discharges (500,000, 800,000, and 957,289 cusecs) using two different turbulent models: k-epsilon and Reynolds’s stress. The simulation findings were compared to the physical modeling results in terms of velocities and water depths for verification. In both velocity (18−27%) and water depth (18−36%) measurements, the k-model had a lower average percentage error than the RS model. On verification using physical modeling, the total average percentage difference from the k-model for all discharges was less than 25%. Numerical simulations based on computational fluid dynamics can be used to better understand turbulence and flow parameters, as well as to assess and develop barrage engineering.