SEDIMENT SIMULATION IN THE UPPER CHANNEL OF SHIP LOCK OF THE THREE GORGES PROJECT

摘要

Sediment problem is one of the key problems of the Three Gorges Project. Three physical models with different scales have been built to study it. One way of the ships going through the Three Gorges dam is a five stepped ship lock with double routes. Before ships going into the ship lock, the chamber must be filled to a proper water level. The water should be correctly filled into or discharged out of the chambers. During these times, the upper channel flow is unsteady and sediment can go into the upper channel. How to synchronously simulate the water current and sediment transport well is difficult to all physical models. In this paper, a two dimensional mathematical model with body-fitted coordinate system is built to calculate the flow current in the upper channel, and two kinds of the ship lock water filling manners are adopted in this model. One is the natural process and the other is the physical model manner. According to the sediment discharge equation based on flow velocity, the volume of sediment entering into the upper channel can be estimated during the ship lock water filling process. Different water filling manners may deduce different sediment volumes entering into the upper channel, which is also described in this paper.