Using a Deflector and Crest Design to Make a Safe Spillway Operation

Floods are an important hazard throughout the world. The origins of some floods are a dam failure, hydraulic structure failure as well as an improper performance of the spillway. Among these, shaft spillways are known as a flood drainage system in dams, which is submerged by increasing the level of the reservoir, so that reduces the spillway efficiency and causes over topping. Investigations show that using deflector and aeration in shaft spillways will cause the flow pattern to improve. In this study, it has been tried to experiment on the impact of a deflector located in the throat and inlet geometry of the crest on the improvement of the hydraulic performance of the shaft spillway, and decrease to some extent the hazard induced by lack of timely drainage of floods in dam reservoirs. In order to investigate the deflector effect, three constriction specimens in shaft throat with constriction area to shaft area ratio ( A d /A i ) of respectively 0.75, 0.5 and 0.25 were considered as scenarios. In each scenario, the conditions of the flow passing through 12 different specimens of spillway with Crown Wheel inlets were tested and the results were compared with the flow conditions in crown wheel spillways without deflector (reference model). The results showed that the use of deflector has an important role in reducing vortex flows and stabilizing changes in the water level of the reservoir, and also increases the discharge coefficient of the flow. The studies on reference models also showed that Crown Wheel inlets (C.W.) improved shaft spillway performance, with C.W. spillways having an average discharge coefficient of 32% higher than shaft spillways. Finally, considering optimal deflector factors and C.W. geometry, an optimal model was proposed for flood reservoir conditions.