Dynamic failures of water controlling radial gates of hydro-power plants: Advancements and future perspectives

Radial gate is the key factor to control water discharging in flood prevention and sustainable hydropower energy generation. Unfortunately, fluid-induced vibration (FIV) problem always occurs owing to the fluctuation load of flow water exerted on the gate, causing vibration failure of radial gate and threatening the safety of hydropower system. The rapid development of renewable energy system renders the gate's vibration issue more urgent, as the gate need to be operated in small gate openings. In recent years, many works had been conducted on this subject. However, the underlying failure mechanisms of radial gate remain unclear, besides, there is still loss knowledge on the dynamic safety evaluation criterion of radial gate considering the FIV issues in the specification. To address this gap, this paper comprehensively reviewed the recent advancements and challenges in hydroelastic vibration failure of radial gate from four aspects: failure patterns, failure mechanisms, vibration responses and hydrodynamic characteristics. The vibration failure characteristics of radial gate are summarized from the typical gate failure cases recorded in definitive literature. The research of the FIV issue of radial gate is mainly concentrated into the stage of dynamic response prediction in practical engineering, the existing shortcoming and challenge are analyzed. The hydrodynamic characteristics exerted on gate are analyzed, meanwhile the existing challenges are also provided. Four reported FIV mechanisms of radial gate are presented, the challenges in revealing the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) process and the underlying failure mechanism are discussed. Moreover, the further research directions on the vibration failure problem of radial gate are provided. The perspectives provided in this work may be insightful for addressing the knowledge gap in this classical vibration problem.