Front matter for Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling in Water Infrastructure

Computational Fluid Dynamics: Applications in Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Treatment, by the Computational Fluid Dynamics Task Committee; edited by Xiaofeng Liu and Jie Zhang (ASCE/EWRI 2019). This book provides an introduction, overview, and specific examples of computational fluid dynamics and their applications in the water, wastewater, and stormwater industry. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1531-3)

Water Engineering with the Spreadsheet: A Workbook for Water Resources Calculations Using Excel, by Ashok Pandit (ASCE Press 2016). Ashok Pandit provides more than 90 problems, ranging from easy to difficult, in the areas of fluid mechanics, hydraulics, hydrology, and stormwater management. Using the accompanying spreadsheets, students will gain a solid knowledge on the topics along with hands-on experience with Excel. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1404-0)

Renewable Energy Technologies and Water Infrastructure, by the Advancing Renewable Energy Technologies Committee; edited by S. Rao Chitikela, Venkata Gullapalli, and William F. Ritter (ASCE/EWRI 2022). This book provides an in-depth look at policy, regulation, and the development and application of renewable energy technologies to existing water infrastructure. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1585-6)

Electro-Coagulation and Electro-Oxidation in Water and Wastewater Treatment, edited by Patrick Drogui, R. D. Tyagi, Rao Y. Surampalli, Tian C. Zhang, Song Yan, and Xiaolei Zhang (ASCE/EWRI 2022). This book provides a detailed overview of the origins, principles, benefits, impacts, and applications of electro-coagulation and electro-oxidation for water/wastewater treatment. (ISBN 978-0-7844-1602-0)

Artificial Neural Networks in Water Supply Engineering, edited by Srinivasa Lingireddy and Gail M. Brion (ASCE/EWRI 2005). This report examines the application of artificial neural network (ANN) technology to water supply engineering problems. (ISBN 978-0-7844-0765-3)

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to calculate, analyze, and visualize fluid (liquids, gases and dissolved gases) flows. This publication provides general introductions to best practices for CFD modeling in water infrastructure for practitioners, particularly those new to CFD modeling, which is becoming a widely used tool in the design and retrofitting of water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure. Refined numerical modeling via CFD serves as an alternative or complement to physical modeling.

In recent years, CFD has often been used in evaluating and troubleshooting existing water systems, as well as improving future designs. As with the applications in other fields, the popularity of CFD in the water industry has been propelled by a multitude of factors including but not limited to the maturity achieved by CFD techniques, development of stable and reliable numerical schemes, and ever-improving CAD and meshing technologies for real-world complex geometries. This has been accompanied by many commercial and open-source CFD packages that can be run on increasingly more powerful computing hardware. Despite the visible progress in the application of CFD in water infrastructure projects achieved to date, there are still many challenges that hinder the widespread use of CFD techniques in water design. Perhaps more important is that many of these challenges may result in misuse of the tool with dire consequences. It is imperative that CFD practitioners appropriately apply this tool without overpromising capability or accuracy and that reviewers of CFD model results know what to look for in ensuring proper methods have been applied and that results are representative of reality.

This book is divided into several chapters as follows: Chapter 1 details problem formulation and selection of multiphysics models. Chapter 2 illustrates commonly used meshing techniques and types. Chapter 3 details different types of initial and boundary conditions available in most CFD platforms. Chapter 4 discusses numerical models widely used in water applications. Chapter 5 describes the steps in choosing the most adequate numerical model and turbulence schemes. Chapter 6 describes grid independence tests required to ensure model results reliability. Model verification and validation are explored in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 outlines documentation and reporting processes. Overarching the afformentioned components is quality control, which should be conducted for each process from beginning to end of the project as presented in Chapter 10. Finally, conclusions are presented in Chapter 11.

Yovanni A. Cataño-Lopera, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE

ASCE CFD Task Committee, Chair

Advanced Hydraulics Practice Lead at Black and Veatch, Chicago, IL

David Spelman, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor at Bradley University, Department of Civil Engineering and Construction, Peoria, IL

Tien Yee, Ph.D.

Associate Professor at Kennesaw State University, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Marietta, GA

Srikanth Pathapati, Ph.D.

Manager Technologist at CDM Smith, Bakersfield, CA

Kade J. Beck, Ph.D., P.E.

CFD Modeling Leader at Garver, Wichita, KS

Johnny Lee, P.Eng., CEng

Independent Researcher

Carrie Knatz, P.E.

ASCE CFD Task Committee, Vice Chair

Principal Engineer at CDM Smith, Bakersfield, CA

Ruo-Qian Wang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Piscataway, NJ

Jie Zhang, Ph.D., P.E.

Lead CFD Engineer and Decision Support System Research Lead at Carollo Engineers, Phoenix, AZ

Rene Camacho-Rincon, Ph.D., P.E.

Lead Water Resources Modeling Discipline at Tetra Tech, Inc., Cocoa Beach, FL

Sri Kamojjala, P.E., D.WRE

Las Vegas Valley Water District, Las Vegas, NV

Financial and logistic support were provided by ASCE–EWRI for the activities of the task committee.