APPLYING NUMERICAL METHOD IN IMPROVING EMERGENCY GATE DESIGN OF MENGKUANG DAM

摘要

The paper presents the enhancement of emergency gate design by using numerical method. Three different emergency gate designs are considered: (1) Original emergency gate, (2) Sloped emergency gate, and (3) Sloped emergency gate with air vent pipe. GAMBIT preprocessor and FLUENT CFD code are employed to develop geometry and analyze numerical result, respectively. In the present study, five different gate openings are studied: 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. According to the result, drag force is inversely proportional to gate opening. The highest drag force is produced by original emergency gate design for all gate openings. Sloped emergency gate has similar drag force to the sloped emergency gate to air vent pipe at gate openings of 20%, 60% and 80%. At the gate openings of 40% and 100%, sloped emergency gate with air vent pipe shows lower drag force than sloped emergency gate. The numerical results also show that sloped emergency gate with air vent pipe produces the highest lift force, followed by sloped emergency and original emergency gates. In conclusion, sloped emergency gate with air vent pipe is the best emergency gate design, since it produces the highest lift force and low drag force.