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NUMERICAL MODELING OF AIR-WATER INTERACTION IN BOTTOM OUTLETS.

APPLICATION TO SUSQUEDA DAM

Conference Paper · February 2012

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 4th IAHR International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures, 9-11 February 2012, Porto, Portugal, ISBN: 978-989-8509-01-7

NUMERICAL MODELING OF AIR-WATER INTERACTION IN BOTTOM

OUTLETS. APPLICATION TO SUSQUEDA DAM

F. Salazar1, R. Morán2, E. Oñate1, M. A. Toledo2 and F.J. Riquelme3

1
Centre Internacional de Mètodes Numèrics en Enginyeria (CIMNE), Spain,
fsalazar@cimne.upc.edu, onate@cimne.upc.edu
2
Department of Civil Engineering: Hydraulic and Energy. ETSICCP, Technical University of
Madrid (UPM), Spain, rmoran@caminos.upm.es, matoledo@caminos.upm.es
3
INHISA Hidráulica, S.A., Spain, tecnico@grupo-inhisa.com

Abstract: The convenience of installing an aeration system in dam bottom outlets is well known
nowadays. Otherwise, damages due to cavitation and vibration are frequently serious, as could be
observed in several dams built in the beginning of the 20th century. Several empirical formulas have
been developed for calculating the maximum air demand, but their results are very sensitive to the
variation of the geometrical characteristics of the installation. The Ministry of Science and
Innovation of Spain has funded a project to address this problem using numerical modeling. The
interaction of two fluids (air and water) with very different physical characteristics is the greatest
difficulty to be overcome. To deal with this challenge, the Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM)
has been used. The method has being applied to verify the performance of the new flat-seat circular-
section valves, which design is being developed by INHISA as an alternative to the traditional
Bureau-Type. Firstly, a case comprising the mentioned valve in a standard facility was analyzed for
validation purposes, as well as for studying the influence of the different parameters in the air flow.
Then, the method has been used for the analysis of the performance of the bottom outlets of
Susqueda Dam.

Keywords: bottom outlets, aeration, PFEM,

INTRODUCTION
Water, flowing at high velocity through a partly opened gate, drags air and may generate negative
pressure. The pressure drop depends on the flow, the gate opening and the geometry of the facility.
The phenomenon may cause interference with the gate operation due to vibration and cavitation
(Erbisti 2004). Thus, air-entrainment is often necessary (Gutiérrez Serret 1995).

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Fig. 1 - Typical airflows in bottom outlets (SPANCOLD 1997).

The main physical characteristics of aeration in bottom outlets are: a) high velocities of the flow of
water; b) small-slope conduits; c) depends on the upstream and downstream conditions; d) depends
on the existence of aerators at the bottom and sides of the conduit and e) there are different types of
flow (Fig. 1) that strongly influence the air demand (SPANCOLD 1997).

BACKGROUND
The interest in determining the air demand encouraged several authors to develop empirical
formulas from experimental data. Many of them are expressed in terms of the air-demand ratio
β (Sharma 1976), which is the ratio of volumetric flow rate of air (Qa) to that of water (Qw).
Q
 a (1)
Qw

This ratio depends on several parameters such as the conduit and gate geometries and the velocity
of water. The most outstanding works were developed by Kalinske and Robertson (1943), Campbell
and Guyton (1953), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (1964), Levin (1965) and Sharma (1976).
Empirical formulas provide different results for several flow regimes. Also, there is a disagreement
on the gate opening for which the maximum air flow occurs. The reason is that the phenomenon is
very sensitive to the particular design of the conduit and its hydraulic conditions. As a consequence,
specific experimental models are typically carried out. Recent works of this kind have been
undertaken by Safavi et al (2007), to investigate the airflows from the outlet exit and from the
aerator, Tullis and Larcher (2009), to repair air-entrainment systems and Frizell (2004), to improve
the air-entrainment system of Folsom Dam bottom outlets.
As a first approximation, the formulas given by Sharma (1976) are frequently recommended
(SPANCOLD 1997), because a) there are different formulas for every possible flow regime, b) they
are based on an extensive experimental campaign, and c) their results are similar or slightly more
conservative than the rest, so its use adds an extra safety factor.
Sharma described seven possible different types of flow in bottom outlets. The expression to
calculate the air-demand ratio depends on the type of flow. For free flow conditions, the suggested
expression is (2), where Fc stands for the Froude number.
  0.09  FC (2)

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NUMERICAL MODELING

About PFEM
The first numerical schemes developed for modeling fluid dynamics used an eulerian formulation. It
means that the computational domain is discretized by a finite element mesh, which remains
constant throughout the simulation. The position of the free surface is often calculated using a
smooth function (level-set) (Osher and Fedkiw 2001) or a scalar value that represents the amount of
fluid that fills a region (“Volume Of Fluid” methods). The main drawbacks of these methods are the
treatment of convective terms and the tracking of irregular highly-variable free surface. However,
they have been successfully applied in dam hydraulics (Salazar et al. 2011).
An alternative to an eulerian formulation is to use a lagrangian description to formulate the
governing equations of both fluid and solid domains. In lagrangian formulation, the movement of
each particle of liquid or solid is followed individually. In recent years, CIMNE has developed a
particular type of lagrangian formulation to solve problems involving the interaction between fluids
and solids. The method is called Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM). PFEM treats mesh nodes
as particles which are free to move and even separate from the main fluid domain, representing
drops and blasts of water. A finite element mesh links the nodes defining the discretized domain,
where the governing equations of fluid mechanics (for liquid) and solid mechanics (for structure)
are solved in the standard FEM fashion (Oñate et al. 2008). An advantage of the lagrangian
formulation is that the convective terms disappear from the fluid equations. The difficulty is to
properly move the nodes of the mesh. It is often necessary to regenerate the mesh during the
transient solution. An innovative mesh generation scheme, based on the extended Delaunay
tessellation, is used for this purpose.
The flow of water through dam bottom outlets involves a fluid moving at high velocity (water)
which drags a less dense fluid (air) and a mixing effect between them. PFEM allows reproducing
the air-water interaction by means of finite elements created from nodes belonging to different
fluids. This is the main reason why PFEM has been applied in this work.

Standard case
The first part of the work focused on the simulation of a standard facility, comprising a bottom
outlet controlled by a flat-seat circular-section valve (a new typology recently developed by
INHISA). The basic model (Fig. 2) consists of: a) a horizontal bottom outlet conduit of 30.0-m long
and 1.5-m diameter; b) a 0.3-m thick partly opened gate; c) a prismatic air tank of 24.5-m high; d) a
vertical aeration conduit of 4.0-m long and 0.5-m diameter, located in the downstream side of the
gate connecting “a)” and “c)”.
In these models, several parameters were varied (conduit length, gate opening, upstream head and
diameter of the aerator) to come to conclusions about their influence in air demand.

3
Fig. 2 - Left: 3D-model (perspective). Right: partly opened gate (side and front views).

Results
Figure 3 shows the relation between air flow measured in the numerical models and the gate
opening, for a 0.5-m diameter air conduit. The maximum air flow was registered for 60% gate
opening, for every value of the upstream energy head.

Fig. 3 - Flow of air (m3/s) in aerator, depending on gate opening and hydraulic upstream head (H).
Air conduit diameter: 0.5 m.

Figure 4 shows a similar chart, comparing the results for different sizes of the air conduit, being the
upstream energy head of 5 m. It can be seen that for the wider aerator, the air flow is higher, and the
gate opening which produces that maximum is smaller.

4
Fig. 4 - Flow of air (m3/s) in aerator, depending on gate opening and diameter of aerator (d).
Upstream hydraulic head of 5 m.

Although most of the authors conclude that the maximum air flow occurs for a 80% gate opening,
there are also references in which this value varies from 60 to 80% (USACE 1964, Tullis and
Larcher 2009). Therefore, it can be concluded that the geometry of the outlet and aeration system
determines the gate opening for the maximum air demand.

Validation
Both qualitative and quantitative validations have been made. Figure 5 shows the velocity field in
both the air (grey) and the water (blue). It can be seen that it reproduces qualitatively the typical
flows (Fig. 1)

Fig. 5 - Water (dark grey) and air (pale grey) distribution. Longitudinal section. Left: global view.
Right: detail of the velocity field in both fluids.

The air flows measured have been converted to the ratio β so to compare them to Sharma’s
predictions. Figure 6 shows this comparison.

5
Fig. 6 - Left: results from PFEM for 30 m and 50 m of upstream head, compared with those
obtained with (2). Right: original chart by Sharma (1976). Note that Sharma’s expression for free
flow (2) fits with the maximums.

Susqueda Dam
The same numerical tool has been used for analyzing the performance of Susqueda dam bottom
outlets. The design of both the outlet and the aeration system had been previously defined, but the
facility was under construction and flat-seat circular-section valves were to be installed. So, it was
decided to model this outlet using the PFEM for validation purposes.
The outlet conduit is 1.5 m diameter, and the valves (two for each conduit; safety and operation) are
installed 4 m far from the downstream face of the dam. At the end of the outlet, a deflector was
installed, to foster the energy dissipation. The air conduit is 0.4-m diameter. It has a vertical 4-m
long reach, a 90º elbow, and a horizontal 3.5-m long reach which also ends at the downstream face.
The numerical model reproduces this geometry, from the operation valve to the downstream face of
the dam. Thus the safety valve is assumed to be totally opened, as it is in normal operation.
The aim was to take in situ measures of the air demand during the performance tests to be carried
out on the facility before its putting into service. Actually, direct measures could not be taken. So,
the comparison in terms of air demand had to be done qualitatively.

6
Figure 7: Left: Existing outlet at Susqueda Dam. Longitudinal section. Right: numerical model
results (streamlines) showing air flow through the aerator.
A key aspect to assess in this special case is the flow regime in the downstream part of the outlet for
different gate openings. A priori, the presence of the deflector could make the flow pressurized for a
wide range of gate openings, so that there is not air flow at all (on the contrary, water would flow
both through the outlet and air conduits). The results of the simulations showed the opposite, i.e.,
free flow was observed, and thus air flow through the air conduit, for up to 90% gate opening. The
in situ tests agreed with numerical simulations.

CONCLUSIONS
Air-entrainment in gated conduits has been successfully simulated with PFEM. Models conducted
in this research represent the discharged flow through a partly-opened gate in a dam bottom outlet
and the airflow through the aerator to the downstream side of the gate. The obtained velocity field
(Fig. 5) reproduces the one indicated by SPANCOLD (1997) (Fig. 1). As for the maximum air flow,
values obtained by PFEM correspond to the results obtained applying the Sharma´s formula
(Sharma 1976).
The maximum flow of air for the basic model occurred for a 60% gate opening. However, this value
has turned out to be variable depending on the diameter of the aerator. This is in accordance with
some experimental results (USACE 1964, Tullis and Larcher 2009), but differs from the 80% gate
opening suggested as a rule of thumb by SPANCOLD (1997). This suggests that the maximum flow
of air depends on the specific features of each facility.
It was observed that an increase in aerator diameter has two effects (Fig. 4): a) the gate opening
which gives the maximum air demand is lower; b) the maximum air demand is higher for larger
diameters of the aerator.
Susqueda Dam bottom outlets have been successfully simulated using the PFEM. Although no
quantitative comparison has been possible, the gate opening for which the flow regime changes
from free flow to pressurized flow has been captured.
PFEM can be a useful tool for calculating the maximum air demand in bottom outlets, and thus to

7
 design the aeration system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work has been partially supported by project VADIVAP (CIT 460000-2009-5) funded both by
the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) and the European Regional
Development Fund (FEDER) of the European Commission, in the Framework of the “Plan
Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica 2008-2011”.

REFERENCES

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