Hydraulic control by a wide weir in a rotating fluid

Abstract

Flow control by a wide, deep weir in a rotating fluid is investigated theoretically and experimentally. A strong (vertical) vorticity constraint due to frame rotation is combined with conservation of the Bernoulli function along streamlines and a standard hydraulic control assumption to show that the volume flux over the barrier is \[ Q = g^{-1}\left[\frac{2}{3}g(H - b_0)-\frac{1}{3}f^2l^2 \right]^{\frac{3}{2}}, \] where H is the depth of the fluid column upstream, bo is the crest height, f is the Coriolis parameter, and l is a length-scale measure of the breadth of the weir. The component of the velocity parallel to the weir crest is computed from conservation of potential vorticity to be v = −fl; perpendicular to the crest, we recover the standard hydraulic relation u = (gh0)½.Experimental investigations of upstream height and streamline deflexion as functions of rotation are described. It is found that agreement with theory is good up to a certain rate of rotation, above which the finite width of the experimental weir becomes important.