Lifting force acting on a gate with high head

The hydrodynamic lifting force acting on a gate with high head is one of the key factors concerning the safety and reliability of gates. The lifting force is closely related to hydrodynamic pressure, and generally, is obtained through the model test. This work presents a method of numerical simulation based on the VOF method for the flow and FEM for the structure of a gate to investigate this kind of the lifting force. The physical model experiments were conducted about the hydrodynamic pressure and the lifting force to verify the numerical results. The comparisons of those two methods show that the maximum relative error is smaller than 11.40 % and the method presented in this paper is feasible and could be used in the designs of hydropower projects.