Sediment Sluicing From The Reservoir With Much More Efficiency

Sediment sluicing from the reservoirs is one of the necessary operations to save the useful life of the reservoirs. Many reservoirs in the world are faced with intense sedimentation, which causes the closure of the bottom sluice gates and, in the following, enhances the sedimentation rate, which causes a significant decrease in the useful volume of the reservoir. According to many reports, Partial Flushing is one of the most effective ways of removing the deposited sediment from large reservoirs. This method has its advantages and disadvantages. For instance, this method does not need to deplete the reservoir completely. Hence, in the arid area, it is the only way that can be done to get rid of sediment, however, on the other side, this method erodes a teeny tiny amount of the accumulated sediment around the sluice gate (flushing cone), and it’s not able to get the dam out of the sedimentation crisis by itself. In this study, by utilizing a numerical and physical model and with cognition of vortex flow around the sluice gate, the vortices around the sluice gate are enhanced by using a specific structure, which causes an increase in partial flushing efficiency. The results declared that by applying a half cylinder structure, the efficiency of partial flushing face with sharp increased up to 15 times. Therefore, the proposed method can be applied in all dams which encounter acute sedimentation to sluice a tremendous amount of sediment out of the reservoir, in a short time, with losing a small amount of water, and consequently, there will be a possibility to run the partial flushing repeatedly with a short interval.