Hydraulic modeling of an automatic upstream water-level control gate

This paper proposes an efficient mathematical model of an automatic upstream water-level control gate, called a Begemann or flap gate. This automatic gate controls the upstream level close to a reference level for free gate flow, using a counterweight to compensate for the hydraulic pressure on the gate. The proposed gate model is designed to be included in a hydraulic simulation model. A discharge law for the gate is first derived using simple physical assumptions. Then a method to compute the static equilibrium is obtained by modeling the opening force exerted by the water on the gate. This mathematical model is validated on experimental data from a small-scale gate and on other data from the literature in order to show the ability of the model to simulate various gates.