Knut Alfredsen knut.alfredsen@ntnu.no
Marcell Szabo-Meszaros marcell.szabo-meszaros@sintef.no
The classical trash-racks, placed at the entrance of intake channels of hydropower plants, had one main purpose to protect the turbine from floating debris. The new era of trash-racks or so-called eco-friendly bar-racks is emerging to protect also the environment, for instance by guiding wandering fish into a safe bypass route.
Fish can utilize eddies in certain sizes and follow them as hydraulic clues. The eco-friendly bar-racks can provide such environment, however they require adequate techniques to study them in prior of implementation. Numerical simulations offer vast amount of possibilities to analyse hydrodynamics and Large Eddy Simulations (LES) approach is suitable to investigate shredded vortexes around bar-racks, in favour of known fish preferences.
The topic offers an opportunity to deepen the applicant's knowledge in advanced numerical modelling with OpenFOAM, visualize the outcome in ParaView and to interpret the hydraulic outcome of the study from the perspective of different fish species (e.g.: Atlantic salmon, European eel, Brown trout).
The expected tasks during the semester are the followings:
• Familiarize with different eco-friendly bar-rack designs (bar profiles)
• Familiarize with the 2D and LES approaches in OpenFOAM software
• Set-up and calibrate a 2D model with LES approach, visualize the outcome by ParaView
• Study and analyse different bar-rack profiles and layouts (flow and vortex characterization)
• Combine the simulated hydrodynamics with known preferences of fish species
• Conclude the findings and propose promising bar-rack solutions