Model experiments were conducted to investigate the performance of a vortex drop structure with a relatively small height to diameter ratio. Detailed measurements of wall pressure and water thickness of annular jet flow were obtained along the vertical drop shaft, and the rate of air entrainment was measured. The results confirmed the high efficiency of energy dissipation in the vortex drop structure even for a relatively small drop height. The air entrainment rate was found to be significant, and good correlation was observed between the rate of air entrainment and the water jet velocity. The one-dimensional frictional free-vortex flow model was extended to include the effects of pressure forces. While the energy loss in the drop shaft can be simulated by correcting the friction factor, both the frictional model and the extended model significantly underpredict the wall pressure.

This article presents a stochastic splash model for analysing the artificial rainfall caused by flood discharge splash in large hydropower stations. In this model, the splash phenomenon is considered as a random process, the flight paths of the splashed droplets are tracked by solving the particle motion equations, and the volume of each droplet is accumulated into a grid on the ground corresponding to its landing coordinates. A neural network was employed to compute the wind velocity vectors and the ground elevations to control the droplet motion and flight time. Thus, the model can account for the influence of the wind field and natural terrain on the rainfall distribution. An indoor splash experiment and field measurements were conducted to compare the measured data with the numerical results, and they showed satisfactory agreement.

Due to the complex structure and the multiformity of boulder arrangements, there is currently no perfect design criterion for nature-like fishways. This paper proposes four types of nature-like fishways arranged with an impermeable partition wall (IPW), a semi-permeable partition wall (SPPW) or a fully permeable partition wall (FPPW). The hydraulic characteristics of these fishways were investigated experimentally. The results show that the discharge of the fishway arranged with a FPPW was almost twice that of an IPW fishway, and the discharge of a SPPW fishway was between the two extremes. The mean flow velocity of the FPPW fishway was larger than that of the other schemes. For the fishway arranged with an IPW, the flow information was basically consistent with that of the engineered technical fishway. In the FPPW or SPPW fishway, there was more abundant flow information and no obvious recirculation zones in the fishway pool, and these conditions are suitable for migratory fish moving up- and downstream. Notably, for the fishway arranged with two fish passages, two mainstreams were formed in the pool, which divided the flow pattern of the pool into three flow regions. A weak recirculation area was formed in the low-velocity region, which facilitates swimming for migratory fish. According to this comprehensive comparative study, the SPPW fishway with two fish passages had low discharge, abundant flow information and favorable fish migration characteristics; thus, it is the optimal fishway scheme among those studied in this paper.