Volume of fluid model for turbulence numerical simulation of stepped spillway overflow

The stepped spillway has increasingly become an effective energy dissipater. When the hydraulic performance of the overflow is clearly known, the energy dissipation could be increased. However, the study of stepped spillway overflow has been based only on model tests until now. In this paper, the k-epsilon turbulence model is used to simulate the complex turbulence overflow. The unstructured grid is used to fit the irregular boundaries and the volume of fluid method is introduced to solve the complex free-surface problem. The free surface, velocities, and pressures on the stepped spillway are obtained by the turbulence numerical simulation. Furthermore, the simulation results compare well with measured data. The study indicates that the turbulence numerical simulation is an efficient and useful method for the complex stepped spillway overflow.