Performance of the Gomaspan Dam's Stepped Spillway Against Cavitation using CFDcity

Abstract

This study aims to determine how well the stepped spillway at Gomaspan dam performs in terms of cavity index. For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code called FLUENT is used. To begin, the code was validated by applying it to the experiments work of (Li et al. 2021), and the findings demonstrate great agreement between CFD and the aforementioned experimental data. Second, the algorithm is applied to the designed stepped spillway of the Gomaspan dam, and the cavity index is obtained at each step. The results show that the design is unsatisfactory, and the steps are particularly vulnerable to cavitation because the inception point located at step 19 and the velocity of water after inception point ranges between (22m/s-34.6m/s), it may also cause the cavitation after a long period of time.