Abstract
Entrapped air pockets reduce flood conveying capacity of a surcharged drainage tunnel, and could be released explosively as geysers from vertical dropshafts. Nevertheless, the impact of dropshaft inflow on air pocket expulsion has hitherto not been fully understood. In this work, experiments was performed on a simplified drainage system consisting of a dropshaft with inflow. An air pocket was introduced into the tunnel; its dynamics in the dropshaft was measured with a high speed camera and pressure transducers. A heuristic analysis on the kinematics of the air pocket showed that when the dropshaft inflow is greater than a critical flow dependent on the dropshaft diameter, the increased compression leads to stronger air pocket expulsion, as spewing and/or ejection of air-water mixture. Observed occurrence of the phenomena generally agrees with the prediction.
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Data Availability Statement
All data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The research is supported by the Faculty Initiation Grant (IGN17EG05) and a support grant from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The assistance on the experiments and image analysis by undergraduate students L. S. Wong and C. H. Chiu is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 3 • March 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 2, 2021
Accepted: Nov 3, 2022
Published online: Dec 23, 2022
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: May 23, 2023
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