The Three Gorges Power Intakes and Their Hydraulic Properties

The paper is intended to describe the power intake schemes in the Three Gorges project and their experiment results. Both scheme A (intake with one entrance hole) and scheme B (intake with double holes) have been optimized for several times. According to experiment result, it has been found that scheme B always showed out much better flowing patterns than schem A. Under the given control condition, scheme B would not induce any sir-entraining vortices. On the contrary, air-entraining vortices have been found before intake in scheme A. Although they could be removed away in A4 scheme, vortices-broken device has to be attached. Furthermore, Scheme B with enlarged entrance area and lower average velocity did not reduce head losses. Both schemes brought about almost same head losses. Nevertheless, the process of optimizations has achieved much benefit from the energy loss point of view. The paper at last simply evaluates the design criterions.