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Numerical analysis of water flow around a bridge pier in a sand mined channel

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 6th IAHR Europe Congress, June 30th – July 2nd, 2020, Warsaw, Poland

Numerical analysis of water flow around a bridge pier in a sand mined channel

Oscar HERRERA-GRANADOS1, Abhijit LADE2, Bimlesh KUMAR3

1
University of Science and Technology, Poland
email: [email protected]
23
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India
email: [email protected]
email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT
Extraction of sand from river beds has a variety of effects on the hydraulic and morphological characteristics
of the fluvial systems. Recent studies on mining pit have revealed that downstream reaches of the mining pit
are more prone to erosion due to increased bed shear stresses. Bridge piers in the vicinity of such mining pits
are also prone to streambed instabilities due to turbulence alterations as suggested by a few recent studies.
Thus, a numerical study was carried out to study the effects of a mining pit on the hydrodynamics around a
circular pier. The numerical experiments were conducted with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code
Flow-3D, which can run several turbulence model closures. In this contribution, the authors applied the
classical RANS equations with the volume of fluid (VOF) method (Savage and Johnson, 2001).
1. Set-up and boundary conditions
The results of two numerical runs are compared in this contribution. In the first experiment, a steady flow
discharge of 0.044 [m3 s-1] was establish as upstream boundary condition flowing along a channel of 1.0 [m]
width having a cylindrical pier. The computational domain is defined based on the dimensions of the tilting
flume of the IIT Guwahati hydraulics laboratory (Lade et al., 2019b). In the second run, the same discharge
was passed around the cylinder along with a dredged trapezoidal pit upstream of the cylinder. The depth of the
pit was 0.1 [m] and it extended throughout the width of the channel. Along the longitudinal section of the
channel, top width of the pit was 0.67 [m] and bottom width was 0.33 [m].
Table 1. Hydraulic parameters of the numerical experiment
Experiment (Run #) Flow discharge [m3s-1] Pier diameter [m] Fr downstream Water depth downstream [m]
Without a mining pit – Run 1 0.044 0.075 0.60 0.105
With a mining pit – Run 2 0.044 0.075 0.58 0.101

The prime focus of the study was to investigate the changes in the flow characteristics downstream the pit (PF1
of Fig. 1) and downstream the cylinder in presence of a mining pit (PF2 of Fig. 1). Therefore, the channel bed
was simulated using a fixed-bed model. The hydraulic conditions of both experiments are depicted in Table 1,
which were established as the CFD boundary conditions. The outlet (downstream boundary condition) was
established using the water depth that was measured during the laboratory records (Lade et al., 2019a).

A) B)
Fig. 1. A) Computational domain showing the cylinder, the profiles PF1, PF2 and the mining pit as set-up in the laboratory (B).

IAHR 2020 – ABSTRACT BOOK 665

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2. Output and analysis of the results

The results show significant changes in the flow and turbulent characteristics around the cylinder due to the
mining pit (See Figs. 2 and 3). As the flow enters the pit, average streamwise velocities (ux) drop significantly
without the pit just upstream the location of the bridge pier (PF1). The turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) just
downstream the pit region (see Fig.3) has increased compared to no-pit flow case suggesting that the pit creates
excess turbulence in the fully developed turbulent flow in the channel. Nonetheless, the turbulent length scale
(Lt) decreases with the pit at the location PF1, thus the secondary currents formed within the pit may affect the
size of the eddies close to the water surface. It is also observable that downstream the location of the pier (PF2),
the same presence of the pier diminishes the influence on the hydrodynamics along the mined channel.

Fig. 2. Output of the CFD model (velocity magnitude) without the sand pit (left side) and with the trapezoidal sand pit (right side).

Fig. 3. Output of the CFD model. Streamwise velocity ux, TKE as well as Lt profiles along the locations PF1 and PF2.

The shear stress at the channel bottom in front of the cylinder does not show a significant change with the
presence of the pier, which means that the RANS method is insufficient to properly calculate the turbulence
characteristics of the flow along the channel (Herrera-Granados, 2018). Thus, to carry out a Large Eddy
Simulation (LES) or a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is recommended to better analyze numerically the
turbulence behavior. The measurements of the velocity and turbulence parameters recorded in the laboratory
will contribute to a proper calibration of the numerical model and further sediment transport researching of the
influence of sand mining in alluvial rivers under different exploitation situations/scenarios.
References
Herrera-Granados O (2018) Turbulence flow modeling of one-sharp-groyne field. In Free surface flows and transport processes :
36th International School of Hydraulics. Geoplanet: Earth and Planetary Series. Springer IP AG, 207-218.
Lade AD, Deshpande V, Kumar B (2019a) Study of flow turbulence around a circular bridge pier in sand-mined stream channel.
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Water Management,https://doi.org/10.1680/jwama.19.00041
Lade AD, A, DT, Kumar B (2019b) Randomness in flow turbulence around a bridge pier in a sand
mined channel..Physica A 535 122426
Savage, BM, Johnson, M.C (2001). Flow over ogee spillway: Physical and numerical model case study. J. Hydraulic Eng.,
127(8), 640–649.

666 IAHR 2020 – ABSTRACT BOOK