CFD Analysis of Flow in a Grated Inlet

Effectively managing floods in urban regions requires effectively designed and well-maintained runoff collection system. The absence of such a system and intense rainfall event will have the potential to disrupt the urban life and cause significant economic loss to properties. Grated inlets, which are a key component in urban drainage network, are used to capture the runoff. In this work, a three dimensional CFD model was developed based on open-source CFD tool, OpenFOAM®, to model flow over a grated inlet. An incompressible, transient, multiphase flow, Volume of Fluid (VOF) simulation was performed to predict the water flow rate through the grate inlet. The predicted flow rates are compared with the HEC-22 monograph values. The close agreement between the results shows the potential of using CFD modeling approach to test the reliability of existing drainage inlets for different flow scenarios.