The sand accumulation phenomena at the upper stream side of hydraulic structures cause many troubles, so it is a pressing need to foresee the feature of sand accumulation, and further to establish the suitable countermeasure to prevent sand accumulation.
The authors put a psammo-hydraulic interpretation on the fundamental problems in the case of applying a special sand elimination tube (a slit conduit or a vortex tube) to sand elimination of hydraulic structures.
At first, from the experiments on the flow in a slit conduit, the authors found out especially following facts.
(1) The flow velocity distribution characteristic in the tube is very different from that of the ordinary case.
(2) Froude number is the parameter that determines the state of the flow.
Next, from the experiments on the trapping efficiency of a vortex tube, the authors proposed some experimental equations, by connecting parameters based on the dimentional analysis, such as Ratio of depth to slit width
h/b, Extracter ratio
Rq=
Qt/ Q, Sand water ratio
RSW= QS/ Q, Froude number
Fr, Sorting index
Sφ, Ratio of mean diameters to slit width
dm/ b, and number of sand grains exposed per unit area
N=
Nd250, with the Trapping efficiency
Qbt/ Qs.
In this case, the authors interpreted the grain size factor, such as Phi mean diameter Mφ(or mean diameter dm), Phi deviation measure (or degree of sorting) σφ, Phi skewness measure αφ, and Phi kurtosis measure βφ, in relation to the other parameters based on the results of experimental analysis or dimentional analysis.
Further, the authors proved that it is possible to eliminate sand almost perfectly, if a suitable form of vortex tube is designed, based on principal parameters which control the trapping efficiency.
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