Head-Discharge Relationships for Submerged Labyrinth Weirs
This article has been corrected.
VIEW CORRECTIONPublication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 3
Abstract
Low-head labyrinth weir control structures installed on mild sloping channels or where the channel downstream of the weir is constricting and/or heavily vegetated can experience submergence. Weir submergence occurs when the tailwater surpasses the weir crest elevation, causing an increase in the upstream driving head for a given discharge, relative to a free-discharge condition. The most familiar relationship for predicting submerged weir head-discharge relationships is likely that of James R. Villemonte, which he published in 1947 for sharp-crested linear weirs. For lack of a better alternative, Villemonte’s relation has also been applied to predicting submerged labyrinth weir performance. A new dimensionless submerged head relationship developed in this study is presented for submerged labyrinth weirs. A similar relationship is also presented for linear sharp-crested weirs. The accuracy of the submerged linear weir relationship was equivalent to Villemonte’s and is simpler to solve when working in terms of total upstream head. Relative to Villemonte’s relationship applied to labyrinth weirs, the new submerged labyrinth weir relationship reduced the predictive errors from 23 to 3.5% (maximum) and 8.9 to 0.9% (average), relative to the experimental data.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
Funding for the study was provided, in part, by the State of Utah through the Utah Water Research Laboratory and Freese and Nichols, Inc., Austin, Tex.
References
Bazin, H. (1894). “Experiences nouvelles sur l’écoulement en déversoir.” Vol. VII, Annales des Points et Chaussees, Memoires et Documents.
Cox, G. N. (1928). “The submerged weir as a measuring device.” Bulletin engineering experiment station series no. 67, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
Falvey, H. T. (2003). Hydraulic design of labyrinth weirs, ASCE, Reston, Va.
Francis, J. B. (1884). “Experiments on the flow of water over submerged weirs.” Trans. Am. Soc. Civ. Eng., 13, 303–312.
Fteley, A., and Stearns, F. P. (1883). “Description of some experiments on flow of water made during the construction of works for conveying water of Sudbury River to Boston.” Trans. Am. Soc. Civ. Eng., 12, 101–108.
Kirkpatrick, K. W. (1957). “Discharge coefficients for spillways at TVA dams.” Trans. Am. Soc. Civ. Eng., 122, 190–210.
Kline, S. J., and McClintock, F. A. (1953). “Describing uncertainty in single sample experiments.” Mech. Eng. (Am. Soc. Mech. Eng.), 75, 3–8.
Rehbock, T. (1929). Hydraulic laboratory practices, ASME, New York, 111–242.
Taylor, G. (1968). “The performance of labyrinth weirs.” Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K.
Tullis, J. P., Nosratollah, A., and Waldron, D. (1995). “Design of labyrinth spillways.” J. Hydraul. Eng., 121(3), 247–255.
Villemonte, J. R. (1947). “Submerged weir discharge studies.” Eng. News-Rec., 139(26), 54–56.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 12, 2005
Accepted: Apr 11, 2006
Published online: Mar 1, 2007
Published in print: Mar 2007
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.