A Three-Dimensional Thermal Model for McNary Dam
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resource Congress 2006: Examining the Confluence of Environmental and Water Concerns
Abstract
Water temperature is an important water quality parameter in aquatic ecosystems, impacting dissolved oxygen, chemical and biological reaction rates, and plant and animal mortality. In particular, during summer months, high temperatures in the forebay, gatewells and juvenile fish collection channel at McNary Dam lead to increased stress on fish population. A 3D hydrodynamic and heat transport model was developed to predict the water temperature on McNary Dam. The flow field was solved using an incompressible RANS solver for buoyant flows. The Boussinesq approach and a standard kappa-epsilon model with wall functions were employed. The thermal model takes into account the energy sources due to solar radiation and the convective heat transfer at the free surface, which is function of the air temperature and wind velocity. The equations of the proposed thermal model were implemented into the commercial code FLUENT. The unsteady energy sources, boundary conditions at the free surface and inflows were programmed. A calibration for a typical day was conducted using measured temperature profiles and weather conditions. Comparison shows that the model reproduced general observed trends and daily fluctuations. The multidimensional temperature and velocities fields are presented and discussed.
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Copyright
© 2006 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Apr 26, 2012
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Aquatic habitats
- Dams
- Ecosystems
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering mechanics
- Environmental engineering
- Fish and fishery management
- Geotechnical engineering
- Hydraulic models
- Measurement (by type)
- Models (by type)
- Temperature effects
- Temperature measurement
- Thermal analysis
- Thermodynamics
- Three-dimensional models
- Water quality
- Water treatment
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