Date of Award

5-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil Engineering

Committee Member

Nigel B. Kaye, Committee Chair

Committee Member

Abdul Khan

Committee Member

Ashok Mishra

Abstract

An experimental and theoretical study was performed to evaluate the characteristics of an asymmetrically situated line plume in a filling box falling through a quiescent uniform environment. The plume spanned the width of the rectangular box, and salt water was used for the buoyant fluid. The experiments were conducted in two different sized tanks, and the total of forty-two experiments was run in three sets: the plume was centered in the tank, placed at the edge of the side wall, and located at several intermediate positions between the end of the wall and mid-point of the tank. The time-averaged front movement of the experiments (obtained from the light attenuation technique) was compared with the theoretical results. The solution for the position of the time-averaged front was first expressed as a function of the height of the box and filling time from an ideal line plume model based on the theory of Morton et al., 1956. The analysis showed that when the plume was centered and against the wall, the stratification results upheld a fair relationship with the standard filling box model. However, asymmetrically located plumes didn’t validate the model using the standard value of 𝐢=0.47. The observations showed that this disagreement might be caused due to the higher entrainment of the ambient fluid in the plume and the bending of the plume towards the closest wall. The bending time of the plume was found to be proportional to the filling time and that was controlled by the plume outflow velocity. The study showed that the average outflow velocity is 0.93𝑓13 for 𝐢=0.47 which is compatible with the predicted time-averaged model for the outflow with the same value of 𝐢. An empirical equation for the bending time was developed and described in terms of β‰ˆπœ†πΏ/𝑓13. Comparison between the theoretical model and experiments shows that the entrainment in the asymmetric line plumes is higher relative to the symmetric line plume.

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