Journal of Korea Water Resources Association ISSN:2799-8746(Print) 2799-8754(Online) 한국수자원학회 논문집

Turbulent flow structure in the high amplitude meandering channel is complex due to secondary recirculation with helicoidal motions and shear layers formed by flow separation from the curved sidewall. In this work, the secondary flow and the superelevation of the water surface produced in the high-amplitude Kinoshita channel are reproduced by the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations using the VOF technique for resolving the variation of water surface elevation and three statistical turbulence models (k-ε, RNG k-ε, k-ω SST). The numerical results computed by a second-order accurate finite volume method are compared with an existing experimental measurement. Among applied turbulence models, k-ω SST model relatively well predicts overall distribution of the secondary recirculation in the Kinoshita channel, while all three models yield similar prediction of water superelevation transverse slope. The secondary recirculation driven by the radial acceleration in the upstream bend affects the flow structure in the downstream bend, which yields a pair of counter-rotating vortices at the bend apex. This complex flow pattern is reasonably well reproduced by the k-ω SST model. Both k-ε based models fail to predict the clockwise-rotating vortex between a pair of counter-rotating vortices which was observed in the experiment. Regardless of applied turbulence models, the present computations using the VOF method appear to well reproduce the superelevation of water surface through the meandering channel.