Experimental Study of the Type VI Stilling Basin Performance

Abstract

Understanding the estuarine turbulent flow from dams, channels, and pipes, as well as the river flow are very important due to the potential to cause damage to the bed of the river or channel and cause scouring of structures such as the saddles of bridges, because of the huge amount of the kinetic energy carried by the flow. One of the most efficient yet simple ways to dissipate this energy is to install a stilling basin at the discharge point to calm the flow. Turbulence data were recorded using acoustic Doppler velocimetry (ADV) for type VI2 of stilling basins for pipe outlets. During the study, various splitters and a cellular baffle were placed in the stilling basin, and the baffle locations were changed to assess the effect on the energy dissipation. Velocity at several locations in the basin was measured for different Froude numbers to investigate the effect of flow rate. Based on the findings of the experiments, several suggestions regarding the efficiency and geometry of stilling basins were made.