Experimental Validation of Volume of Fluid Method for a Sluice Gate Flow

Laboratory experiments are conducted for 2D turbulent free surface flow which interacts with a vertical sluice gate. The velocity field, on the centerline of the channel flow upstream of the gate is measured using the particle image velocimetry technique. The numerical simulation of the same flow is carried out by solving the governing equations, Reynolds-averaged continuity and Navier-Stokes equations, using finite element method. In the numerical solution of the governing equations, the standard k-epsilon turbulence closure model is used to define the turbulent viscosity. The measured horizontal velocity distribution at the inflow boundary of the solution domain is taken as the boundary condition. The volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to determine the flow profile in the channel. Taking into account of the flow characteristics, the computational domain is divided into five subdomains, each having different mesh densities. Three different meshes with five subdomains are employed for the numerical model. A grid convergence analysis indicates that the discretization error in the predicted velocities on the fine mesh remains within 2%. The computational results are compared with the experimental data, and, the most suitable mesh in predicting the velocity field and the flow profile among the three meshes is selected.