Numerical study of flow of labyrinth weir with triangular and curved plan form using Fluent software

Labyrinth weirs have not a straight crest in the perpendicular direction to the flow. The plan view of the weir consists of multiple and broken linear crests that cause the increase of its effective length. The advantages of this type of weirs are higher discharge capacity, easy aeration as well as low fluctuations of water surface at the weir upstream. This paper deals with the simulation of the flow over labyrinth weirs with triangle plan to obtain its discharge coefficients. In order to simulate the flow over the weir, Fluent software was used as a virtual laboratory. The turbulence and the free surface of the flow were modeled by k-ε RNG and volume of fluid (VOF) algorithms, respectively. The results were compared with the experimental results of Kumar et al. (2012) for curved plan crest labyrinth weir. The comparison of the results indicated that the curved plan form weirs have the higher discharge coefficients than the ones in triangular plan form and discharge of curved plan form weirs compared with triangular plan form an increase of 25 percent.