Author(s): Felipe Santos De Castro; Joao Lucas Dozzi Dantas; Andre Mitsuo Kogishi; Patrick Donega Queiroz; Gabriel Galvao Matos; Felipe Araujo Da Mata

Linked Author(s): Felipe Santos de Castro, Gabriel Galvão Matos

Keywords: Trash boom; Containment of debris; Towing tank; Experimental hydrodynamics

Abstract: Debris in rivers harms flood control structures, navigation facilities, and hydropower plants. For small hydroelectric stations, the incidence of debris reduces its generation capacity, which generally occurs due to intake grid clogging. Trash booms are modular devices consisting of a partly submerged grid, pane, or rubber blanket attached to a buoyant body designed to retain and redirect floating debris to be adequately removed. However, their design requires an understanding of its resistance and debris-stopping capacity in complex flow and debris conditions, being experimental laboratory methods a reliable engineer way to identify these characteristics. This work aims to simulate a truncated trash boom model's operation through experiments in the Institute for Technological Research (IPT) towing basin, measuring forces and movements, and testing the model capability to retain and remove debris with a conveyor belt connected to the model, considering the presence of debris of different formats, densities, and volumes at different flow velocities. The experimental procedures cover the design and manufacturing of a 1:4 scale model, the instrumentation devices' assembly, the model's attachment to a conveyor belt at its downstream end. The tests showed an inverted relation of the flow velocity with the trash boom retention capability and the tension in the line, being influenced by the debris accumulation form and quantity. These results provide some understanding of the litter containment at fluvial areas and how that can be applied in the cleaning process of polluted rivers.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC252171192022668

Year: 2022