Keywords
water flow
energy loss
hydraulic head
SolidWorks Flow Simulation
CFD
hydropower
flow velocity
How to Cite
Abstract
This article investigates the energy (head) losses occurring in a water flow passing through wetted cross-sections of various geometric shapes — rectangular, trapezoidal, triangular, semicircular, and parabolic. The analysis was carried out in the SolidWorks Flow Simulation computational fluid dynamics (CFD) environment, where the flow velocity distribution, pressure field, and hydraulic losses were determined for each cross-section type under identical hydraulic conditions. The CFD-predicted head losses were significantly higher than the one-dimensional Darcy–Weisbach analytical estimates, indicating that the CFD model captures additional three-dimensional effects, inlet–outlet disturbances, and corner-induced secondary flows that are not fully represented by the simplified analytical model. According to the CFD results, the semicircular cross-section produced the lowest energy loss, approximately 26% less than the rectangular one, while the analytical Darcy–Weisbach calculation predicted a smaller reduction of approximately 12–13%. Recommendations are given on the optimal cross-section shape for reducing energy losses in small hydropower structures.
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