Experimental investigation of the optimization of stilling basin with shallow-water cushion used for low Froude number energy dissipation

Energy dissipations induced by the hydraulic jump and the trajectory jet are the most widely known as the two dissipation modes at the downstream of flood discharging structures, which are often considered quite different even contradictory. However, such two energy dissipators can be used jointly and harmonically. In this paper, a new type of stilling basin with a shallow-water cushion and a triangular bottom deflector is proposed based on two different scale physical model tests of the flood discharging tunnel No. 2 of Luding hydropower project. The experimental results show that the flow regime of the hydraulic jump in the presented stilling basin with bottom deflector enjoys a good and stable performance within a large range of flow rates and the energy dissipation rate is considerably high as compared to the conventional stilling basin even at a low Froude number. The results also indicate that the stilling basin with triangular bottom deflector has a better performance in improving the potential cavitation erosion according to the analysis of the pressure and the cavitation number compared to the trapezoidal one. The proposed new type of shallow-cushion stilling basin with a shallow-water cushion can be applied in similar energy dissipation projects with low Froude number and large range of flow rates.