Numerical Simulations of Efficiency of Curb-Opening Inlets
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 1
Abstract
The geometry of highway pavement and drainage inlets, especially cross slope, longitudinal slope, and local depression and transition length, usually determine the highway surface drainage capacity. In this study, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, FLOW-3D, is used to develop models simulating unsteady, free-surface, shallow flow through curb-opening inlets, thereby demonstrating that an advanced CFD model can be used as a virtual laboratory to evaluate performance (i.e., inlet efficiency) of curb-opening inlets with different geometry conditions. Predicted intercepted flow and inlet efficiency agree well with laboratory measurements. Flow simulations were extended to smaller cross slopes for which laboratory tests were not conducted but which can occur in a highway transition.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks for Flow Science Inc. to provide FLOW-3D software with the educational price for university education and research projects. This research is partial supported through the startup funds provided by the UNSPECIFIEDDepartment of Civil Engineering at Auburn University. Associate editor and two reviewers provided valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript. We thank all of them.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 1 • January 2010
Pages: 62 - 66
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 12, 2008
Accepted: Jul 5, 2009
Published online: Dec 15, 2009
Published in print: Jan 2010
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