Reducing cross-flow vibrations of underflow gates: Experiments and numerical studies

An experimental study is combined with numerical modelling to investigate new ways to reduce cross-flow vibrations of hydraulic gates with underflow. A rectangular gate section placed in a flume was given freedom to vibrate in the vertical direction. Horizontal slots in the gate bottom enabled leakage flow through the gate to enter the area directly under the gate which is known to play a key role in most excitation mechanisms. For submerged discharge conditions with small gate openings the vertical dynamic support force was measured in the reduced velocity range 1.5 < V-r< 10.5 for a gate with and without ventilation slots. The leakage flow significantly reduced vibrations. This attenuation was most profound in the high stiffness region at 2<V-r<3.5. Two-dimensional numerical simulations were performed with the Finite Element Method to assess local velocities and pressures for both gate types. A moving mesh covering both solid and fluid domain allowed free gate movement and two-way fluid-structure interactions. Modelling assumptions and observed numerical effects are discussed and quantified. The simulated added mass in still water is shown to be close to experimental values. The spring stiffness and mass factor were varied to achieve similar response frequencies at the same dry natural frequencies as in the experiment. Although it was not possible to reproduce the vibrations dominated by impinging leading edge vortices (ILEV) at relatively low V-r, the simulations at high V-r- showed strong vibrations with movement-induced excitation (MIE). For the latter case, the simulated response reduction of the ventilated gate agrees with the experimental results. The numerical modelling results suggest that the leakage flow diminishes pressure fluctuations close to the trailing edge associated with entrainment from the wake into the recirculation zone directly under the gate that most likely cause the growing oscillations of the ordinary rectangular gate. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).