Author(s): Damien Violeau; Kamal El Kadi Abderrezzak; Clement Buvat; Nicolas Gueguen; Oscar Castro-Orgaz

Linked Author(s): Oscar Castro-Orgaz, Damien Violeau, Kamal El Kadi Abderrezzak

Keywords: Grid clogging; Flow in aquatic plants; Porous media; Barree-conway model; Head loss

Abstract: In river channels conducting water to a city or to an industrial site, water intakes are always equipped with grids that prevent large debris from penetrating the water system. Sometimes, aquatic plants that are transported by the river reach the grid, and grid clogging occurs in case of a massive arrival of such plants or algae. This, in turn, determines an important head loss with consequences on the water availability for the concerned system. Here we study the water free surface profile though a grid clogged by a rectangular patch of aquatic plants in a steady regime. Our work contains three major studies: 1) experimental research in a laboratory open channel, 2) theoretical developments for porous media flow, 3) a numerical study using different theoretical models. We propose a formula to describe the water free surface along the plant patch as a function of the patch length, upstream water depth and flow rate. From experimental and numerical evidence, it is shown that the plant patch can be modelled by a porous medium approach; the latter, however, does not follow a Darcy law but rather a Barree–Conway law.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/978-90-833476-1-5_iahr40wc-p0012-cd

Year: 2023