A Study on the Trapezoidal Cutthroat Flumes for Measuring Flow in Open-Channels

개수로의 유량 측정을 위한 제형 Cutthroat Flume에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare flow discharges of rectangular, V-notch and trapezoidal type of cutthrooat flumes, and the published data for trapezoidal parshall flumes. And the trapezoidal cutthroat flumes were also compared in their accuracy of discharge measurements for various convergence ratios in the inlet section and divergence ratios in the outlet section. Five flumes were studied, and all the flumes were 45cm long with flat-bottom and were made of well-finished transparent acryl plate of 3mm thickness. One rectangular, one V-notch and three trapezoidal types were numbered 1 to 5 as shown in Fig. III-1. The measured depth of water was ranged from 5 to 20cm. The results obtained in this study are summarized as follows: 1. The general discharge equations for tested prototypes are listed for free flow in Table IV-1 and for submergence flow in Table IV-4. 2. In both free and submerged flow, the accuracy of the discharge formula obtained by this test is highly significant at 1% level as shown in Table IV-2 and Table IV-6. The accuracy of disharges measured depends upon the convergence and divergence ratios in the trapezoidal types: the less the ratios of convergence as well as divergence, the lower the accuracy. 3. Submergence ratios tend to increase in the order of flume number except flume No. 4. This implies that trapezoidal cutthroat flumes are more acceptable than rectangular or V-notch ones for free flow. 4. The transition submergence for the trapezoidal Parshall flumes ranges from 80-85 percent, which is slightly higher than the tested flume. However, the trapezoidal cutthroat flume No. 5 has higher transition submergence ratio, ranging from 73-78 percent, than other trapezoidal ones. The difference between the trapezoidal Parshall flumes and the trapezoidal cutthroat flumes in transition submergence seems small enough to be ignored in their field use. 5. Trapezoidal cutthroat flume is simple and economical to construct in existing openchannels whose shapes are generally trapezoidal. In order to obtain the best rating accuracy, flume No. 3 among the tested trapezoidal types is recommended, because it shows the highest accuracy for both free and submerged flow.