Many studies have been made on the prediction of the behaviour of thermal effluents into the seas, lakes, and rivers. These studies are classified into two groups: one is experimental study and the other is numerical study. The first to fourth report of this study belong to the former. Through these studies the authors clarified the influence of some dominant nondimensional factors, that is, densimetric Froude number etc., on the behaviour of thermal effluents into rectangular open channels. In experimental studies, however, two difficult problems are always encountered. One is that it takes a large amount of money and time to make the experimental apparatus, and the other is the problem of scale effects. On the other hand, the performance of the digital computer has increased remarkably in both computation speed and memory capacity in the last five years and they are now easier and cheaper to use than in previous years. This paper investigates the applicability of SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equations) to a flow field in a rectangular open channel into which thermal effluent is discharged from a rectangular conduit in a side wall of the channel. At first we investigated the influence of the standard of convergence judgement by the ADI method, distances between meshes, and boundary conditions for velocity v in the main flow direction at the thermal effluent outlet, on the accuracy of numerical calculations. It was clarified that the boundary condition for the velocity v at the outlet of the thermal effluent should be taken as free slip rather than no slip. The computated and experimental results were compared to investigate the total accuracy of SIMPLE. The computational and experimental conditions are; width of the channel: 20cm, depth of the channel: 10cm, dimensions of the rectangular conduit: 5cm×2cm, depth of the center of conduit: 5cm, temperature of thermal effluent: 41.0℃, ambient water temperature: 26.1℃, flow rate of the channel: 78.5l/min, flow rate of thermal effluent: 4.5l/min. The calculated thermal distribution, reduction of maximum temperature in the main flow direction, areas in the isothermal lines, and volumes in the isothermal contours agreed well with experimental results, thus clarifying that SIMPLE is applicable to the above flow field. To verify the general applicability of this numerical calculation method to the above flow field, however, more calculations under various conditions are necessary. We intend to continue to study this point and report the results in the next paper.
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