Study on Numerical Analyses of Water Flow
- Three-Dimensional Analyses in the Use of Personal Computers -

Our company uses a lot of water for power generation at hydraulic power plants, and as a condenser cooling water at thermal electric and nuclear power plants. Therefore, we need to discharge the water safely and steadily in aqueduct facility at power plants. We also need to understand the hydrological regime in rivers, dam reservoirs and the sea around at intake or outlet. If problems such as locally faster water flow and bank erosion happen, we need to take measures against them.

So far we have roughly studied the water flow on desk plan, and then studied the details in the use of hydraulic model experiments. Thanks to the improvement of performance of personal computers (PC) and numerical calculation methods, 3-D analyses for water flow are now possible. With the 3-D analyses by PC, we can understand more details of how water flows rather than desk plans, and it is possible to make plans or design conduit facilities. Furthermore, as we focus on cases we have to study based on the results of these analyses, it is expected that we can efficiently design aqueduct facility.

Based on the results above, we will continue our research to make the easy 3-D analyses of water flow possible by using PCs.

We will improve and count up commercially-produced analysis software for PC, and weigh the results of hydraulic model experiments and actual measurement in order to enhance the accuracy of 3-D analyses using PCs. We will also improve the environment so that everybody can easily use the software.