Nadia Salas
Research Mentor: Jeremy Bricker
Mentor Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Author(s): Taeksang Kim, Jeremy Bricker
Session: Session 5 (2:00 PM – 2:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 129
Abstract
The St. Marys River Compensating Works is a multi-gate hydraulic structure that regulates the discharge from Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes and plays a critical role in maintaining stable water levels and flow conditions in the St. Marys River. Reliable characterization of the hydraulic performance of the sluice gates is particularly important when the gates operate under partially opened configurations, where the relationship among discharge, gate opening, and water levels becomes more complex. Improved understanding of these relationships is essential for predicting flow behavior and supporting safe navigation near the Soo Locks. This study presents a series of laboratory experiments designed to investigate the hydraulic characteristics of flow through partially opened sluice gates under controlled conditions. A 1:62 scale physical model representing two adjacent gates of the Compensating Works was constructed in the University of Michigan hydraulic flume. The model includes the central pier and asymmetric side half-piers to replicate the prototype gate geometry and capture the hydraulic interaction between adjacent gates. Experiments were conducted under multiple gate opening configurations while the inflow discharge was varied across a range of operating conditions. Water surface elevations were measured at several upstream and downstream locations using conductivity-type wave gauges, and flow velocities downstream of the gates were measured using Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters to characterize the velocity field and turbulence properties of the flow. The resulting dataset provides detailed measurements of discharge, water levels, and flow velocities for different gate operation scenarios. These measurements will be used to develop stage-discharge relationships for multiple gate configurations and to provide experimental data for validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of the Compensating Works.
