Plain Stilling Basin Performance below 30° and 50° Inclined Smooth and Stepped Chutes

Energy dissipators, such as stilling basins, are usually required at the toe of stepped chutes to achieve adequate and safe operation of the spillway. Stepped chute hydraulics has been extensively studied in last several decades, however, only limited knowledge is available on the stilling basin performance below stepped chutes. In particular, the effect of the chute slope remains unknown, despite being a central design issue. Therefore, an experimental campaign was performed using a 30° or 50° inclined smooth or stepped chute with an adjacent conventional plain stilling basin. The experimental results indicated that, within the stilling basin, the surface characteristics and the roller as well as hydraulic jump lengths are practically independent of the chute slope. This further strengthens the previous findings that stepped chutes require 17% longer dimensionless jump lengths and consequently stilling basin lengths. The experimental results also confirmed that stepped chutes generated increased extreme and fluctuating bottom pressure characteristics at the stilling basin entrance area. With increasing chute slope, the latter were found to significantly magnify. However, such increased magnitudes were not expected to provoke cavitation damage as stepped chute inflows induced bottom aeration at the basin entrance, irrespective of the chute slope.