Investigations on the establishment of uniform flow in compound channel flumes

International audience; There has been recently increasing concern about the uniformity of flow at measuring sections in straight compound channel experiments. Experiments have been usually carried out with the same total head at the inlet of the main channel and floodplain and as a result the velocities entering into the main channel and onto the floodplain are also the same. As flow enters onto the floodplain, the floodplain discharge exceeds the discharge for a uniform flow condition, hence mass transfer towards the main channel progressively occurs along the flume until flow becomes uniform for both main channel and floodplain. This paper investigates the influence of relative depth on the length required for a uniform flow condition to be achieved in compound channel flumes. The quasi one-dimensional model, the Independent Sub-Sections Method (ISM), the two-dimensional model Telemac 2D and a three-dimensional numerical model have been used to simulate the experiments conducted at LMFA (France) and at UCL (Belgium). The ISM has been subsequently used to investigate more upstream conditions at the LMFA and their resulting flow developments in relation to the flume length. The results show that as the relative depth increases, the length required for uniform flow condition increases and can even exceed the actual length of some of the experimental flumes studied in literature.