On Scouring Efficiency of Flush Waves in Sewers: A Numerical and Experimental Study

In sewer sediment management, the removal of depositions using hydraulic flushing gates has recently gotten great attention. Despite numerous investigations, the complex process of sediment transport under flushing waves is not yet well understood. The present work aims to calibrate and validate a coupled computational fluid dynamics and discrete element method (CFD-DEM) to study the fluid-sediment interaction in sewers. The CFD part of the simulation was carried out in the software Ansys Fluent which is two-way coupled to the DEM software EDEM. The multiphase model volume of fluid (VOF) was used to simulate the flushing wave, while the sediments were handled as DEM particles using the discrete phase model (DPM). To validate the 3D model, experimental work has been performed in a circular laboratory pipe with sand and gravel of different size distributions. A construction of a sluice gate was installed to realize the flushing event, which is similar to a dam-break wave. The evolution of the sediment bed and the scouring efficiency of the waves were examined under different flushing conditions. The results showed that the CFD-DEM method could be used to investigate the performance of flushing devices and various features of sediment transport which are not easy to obtain in the laboratory or field.