Assessment of Parshall flumes for discharge measurement of open-channel flows: A comparative numerical and field case study

Ali Khosronejad, William Herb, Fotis Sotiropoulos, Seokkoo Kang, Xiaolei Yang

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13 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents a series of numerical and field studies to examine the accuracy of two field-scale Parshall flumes, which are employed to measure the flow rate of a wastewater system in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The numerical studies were carried out using the large-eddy simulation (LES) and level-set methods to compute the turbulent flow of sewers under two-phase flow (wastewater and air) conditions. Flow rate measurements in the field were conducted using the dye dilution approach and an in-site flow measuring tool. Using the combination of field measurements and numerical simulations, this research aims at quantifying (i) the margin of error of the filed-scale Parshall flumes and (ii) the water surface fluctuations within the Parshall flumes. The LES turbulent model, coupled with the level-set method, allowed for resolution of instantaneous water surface variations and uncertainty quantification of the flow rate measurements.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number108292
JournalMeasurement: Journal of the International Measurement Confederation
Volume167
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Minneapolis Metropolitan Council, Office of Environmental Services, and partially supported by NSF Grant EAR-1823121 .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Dye dilution experiment
  • Flow discharge
  • Large-eddy simulation
  • Level set method
  • Parshall flume

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