Flow through a sluice gate over a broad crested weir under free- and submerged-flow conditions

ABSTRACT This paper describes the hydraulic characteristics of flow through a sluice gate over a broad-crested weir with a fixed upstream ramp slope of 1:2 and downstream ramp slopes of 1:2, 1:3, and 1:4. A relationship was proposed to determine the contraction coefficient of the flow passing through the gate, under free-flow conditions, in which the average value was 0.71 for all observed data. The developed relationship was used to calculate the head-loss coefficient from the studied structures under free-flow conditions, which averaged 0.31. The value of the mean absolute relative error for the proposed relationship to estimate the discharge coefficient under free-flow conditions was 1.7%. Examination of the different downstream slopes on the discharge coefficient under free-flow conditions showed that a downstream ramp slope of 1:3 is most appropriate when compared to the results for the other slopes. The value of the mean absolute relative error of the developed relationship to estimate the discharge coefficient under submerged flow conditions was 5.7%, while its corresponding value from the WinGate software was 13.1%. A survey of the effect of downstream ramp slope on the depth of submergence threshold showed that an increase in the downstream slope tends to increase the depth of the submergence threshold, whereby its value under low slopes was not significant.