Project Description
THE PROJECT
Creaform has extended its expertise in the civil works sector by simulating the flow in a major drinking water pumping station. This work was achieved in the context of the overhaul of a 227 000 m³ reservoir originally built in 1960 and decommissioned in 1980. It is currently refurbished in order to double the city’s drinking water supplies. The overhaul required the restoration of the reservoir, construction of new pumping wells and installation of new pumps. The engineering firm, WSP, was in charge of the design and commissioned Creaform to perform Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations prior to construction.
Our CFD approach aimed at representing the water flowing from the large reservoirs into the wells and the pumps so as to optimize the hydraulic design. The simulations were performed using the k-epsilon turbulence model on ~12M cells polyhedral meshes with prisms layers. The action of the pumps was modeled with a pressure jump methodology at the domain outlets using the performance curve of the pumps and the drinking water network pressure.
The design was optimized in order to decrease hydraulic losses and maximize flow uniformity in the pipes that were upstream of the pumps. This was not only useful for complying with regulatory standards installations but also ensured the proper operation of the station and its durability.
Services provided
- Compare several configurations of the slide gates and their effect on the pumps
- Test a large number of water demand scenarios and establish the optimal sequencing for pumps activation
- Challenge the design against very low water levels in the reservoir
- Modify the entrance flow conditions towards the pumps by adding optimized bell intakes
GALLERY
TOOLS AND METHODS USED
Based on the client’s needs, Creaform used the following tools and methods:
- CAD Preparation
- Prism layer
- StarCCM+
- RANS equations
- Surface wrapper
- K-epsilon models
- Polyhedral mesher
- Volume of Fluid (VOF)