Morphodynamic Modelling of Sediment Control Groynes in a Meandering River Entering a Reservoir

Abstract

Sedimentation is one of the consequences of hydropower plant construction. Such structures not only have an influence on reservoir morphology, but also have great impact on both upstream and downstream river morphology. This study focuses on fluvial morphological changes in between two hydropower plants on the Drava River, Austria. The influence of both reservoir management methods (flushing) and human intervention (groynes) have been investigated. The first stage started with validating an unsteady Delft3D morphodynamic model of the meandering reach. This validation shows the importance of spatial grain size distribution in predicting bed load transport. Analysis of the flushing method includes investigation of the duration of gate-opening before and after peak flood. The results show that the duration of lowering the water level at the hydropower plant (by opening the gate) before starting the peak flood will not have a big influence on the river morphology upstream of the reservoir. However, the duration of maintaining the low water level after the peak flood has a large influence on both the river morphology in the upstream portion of the reservoir and on the sediment transport toward the reservoir In the second part of this study, hydraulic structural groynes were applied in the river reach. The objective was to design a groyne field that will minimize sediment transport to the reservoir. Both emerged and submerged groynes were investigated. In addition, the influences of both groyne head shape and the distribution of sediment grain size in the groyne zone were examined. This study shows that under an unsteady simulation, when the groynes are submerged by 1m at normal flow, the sediment supply to the groyne zone decreases compared to the emerged case. However, if the groynes are submerged by 0.5m, the sediment supply to the groyne zone will be greater than the emerged case for an aspect ratio in between (0.5-2). Finally, applying L-head groynes produces less erosion in the main stream and a higher sediment supply compared to straight groynes.