Experimental and numerical investigation of scour downstream contracted spillways

A study of scour downstream of free hydraulic jump in stilling basin of stepped spillways was carried out. This paper employed an experimental study to investigate the stepped spillway with the movable bed material of D50= 3.1 mm. The effect of the contraction ratio of the stepped spillway was highlighted. Different downstream divergent angle was studied to minimise the scour depth, the results showed that the relative scour depth was reduced by 23% for divergent angle is equal to 170°, different shapes of buffer in stilling basin were also studied to reduce the scour depth where the considered buffer decrease the relative scour depth up to 84%. This study was simulated by Flow 3D program to analyse the scour hole formed using velocity vectors at the bed. The simulated results well agreed with the measured data.