The Seattle District wants to better manage the Ballard Locks and structures along the Lake Washington Ship Canal (LWSC) in a way that will maintain the environmental sustainability and biodiversity in the area. Due to strict salt water intrusion regulations in the LWSC, the Seattle District is working on upgrading their management practices such that they will resolve two inter-related problems. First, to improve the fish passage conditions for migrating salmon; and second, to learn how to better manage the salt wedge that forms and intrudes upstream. Based on the hydrodynamic and water quality results that are produced by this research, the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Portland Office will use their Eulerian-Lagrangian-Agent-Model (ELAM) to analyze fish patterns, looking for the most beneficial management schemes that assist salmon in migrating upstream. This research implemented CFD engineering techniques to help better understand the effectiveness of the hydraulic structures in the area, as well as come up with management practices that both mitigate the salt water intrusion from Puget Sound, and improve the migrating passages for salmon.

[pt] Operações de posicionamento de tampão de cimento na indústria do petróleo representam um exemplo de escoamento dominado por efeitos gravitacionais. Essa situação é altamente instável visto que o cimento geralmente é mais denso que o fluido do poço e, como consequência, suas posições tendem a se inverterem. O presente estudo objetiva aprimorar a percepção dos mecanismos físicos associados às operações de tamponamento através da análise de escoamentos de inversão por gravidade. Com esta finalidade, executam-se experimentos de visualização com líquido mais denso posicionado sobre outro de menor densidade em tubo vertical. Ademais determina-se a velocidade da interface através do processamento e análise de imagens. A influência dos parâmetros governantes é averiguada sobre a velocidade de inversão e o regime de escoamento. A importância relativa entre as forças gravitacionais, viscosa, inercial e interfacial são avaliadas. A primeira etapa do estudo consiste na realização de experimentos com pares de fluidos newtonianos e imiscíveis com pequena diferença de densidade. Examinam-se dois regimes de escoamento, a saber gotas e slugs em queda. Os resultados experimentais demonstram que a velocidade terminal pode ser estimada por correlações empíricas de esferas rígidas em queda dentro de um tubo. A segunda etapa da pesquisa consiste na análise de escoamento de inversão por gravidade com fluido elasto viscoplástico tixotrópico sobre óleo newtoniano menos denso. Constatam-se três diferentes regimes de escoamento, denominados instável, quase-estável e estável (sem escoamento). O regime instável apresenta escoamento wavy core annular com o líquido mais denso no centro. No regime quase-estável há formação de plug flow após um tempo de retardo, que é função dos efeitos tixotrópicos e elásticos do material. Através da análise dos resultados experimentais é possível identificar, para um dado par de fluidos, a janela de operações no espaço de parâmetros governantes dentro da qual a velocidade de inversão é suficientemente baixa (ou nula) para assegurar o sucesso da operação de tamponamento. / [en] Cement plug placement in oil industry operations represents an example of buoyancy-driven exchange flows. This situation is highly unstable since cement is usually denser than well fluid and, as a consequence, their positions tend to invert. The present study aims to improve the perception of the physical mechanisms associated to cement plug operations through the analysis of exchange flows. To this end, visualization experiments are performed with denser liquid positioned above a lower-density liquid in a vertical tube. In addition, the interface front speed is determined through image processing and analysis. The influence of the governing parameters is investigated on the speed of inversion and flow regime. The first stage of the study consists of conducting experiments with pairs of immiscible Newtonian liquids with small density difference. Two different flow regimes were examined, namely, falling drops and falling slugs. Experimental results demonstrate that the terminal velocity can be estimated by empirical correlations for falling rigid spheres within a tube. The second stage of the research consists of an exchange flow analysis considering an elastoviscoplastic thixotropic fluid above a less dense Newtonian oil. Three different flow regimes were observed, namely unstable, quasi-stable, and stable (no flow). The unstable regime is a wavy core-annular flow with the denser liquid in the core. In the quasi-stable regime a slow plug flow starts after a time delay, which is a function of material thixotropic and elastic effects. Through analysis of the experimental results it is possible to identify, for a given pair of fluids, the operational window in the governing parameter space within which the speed of inversion is sufficiently low (or zero) to ensure the cement plug operation success.

Forecast and estimation on transmission line losses is a vital task in the daily operation and planning of the Swedish power system. The aim with this thesis is to design a new line loss prediction model at Svenska kraftnät (Svk), which provides a hourly forecast of the transmission line losses the next day for the Swedish bidding areas (SE1-SE4). The final goal is to reduce the additional cost related to inaccurate predictions. The developed model is based on regression analysis on historical line losses and estimated exchange flows between the adjacent bidding areas computed by linear programming. Simulation results for 2015 show that it is, with rather simple estimates and assumptions, possible to increase the prediction accuracy with up to 27% compared with the existing method and to reduce the related costs in a similar way. The study also shows that future modelling has potential to increase the precision even further and recommends a Neural Network approach as the next step. / Prognoser och estimering av stamnätsförluster är en central del i den dagliga driften av det svenska kraftsystemet. Den här uppsatsen har därför syftat till att utveckla en simuleringsmodell som ger en timvisprognos över morgondagens förluster i varje elområde (SE1-SE4). Detta verktyg är senare tänkt att precisera den dagliga upphandlingen av förluster och därmed minska kostnaden kopplad till osäkra prognoser. Den utvecklade modellen bygger på en regressionsanalys av tidigare uppmätta förluster och uppskattade transmissionsflöden mellan de närliggande elområdena beräknad med linjär programmering. Simulerignar för 2015 visar att, det med föhrhållandesvis enkla antaganden och uppskattningar av indata, går att precisera förlusterna med uppemot 27% jämfört med dagens prognos och därmed minska kostnaderna i liknande omfattning. Studien visar också att förbättringspotentialen är stor och rekommende-rar fortsatta studier utifrån en Neurala Nätverk modell.

The need to consider groundwater and surface water as a single resource has fostered the interest of the scientific community on the interactions between surface water and groundwater. The region below and alongside rivers where surface hydrology and subsurface hydrology concur is the hyporheic zone. This is the region where water exchange determines many biogeochemical and ecological processes of great impact on the functioning of rivers. However, the complex processes taking place in the hyporheic zone require a multidisciplinary approach. The combination of innovative point and distributed techniques originally developed in separated disciplines is of great advantage for the indirect identification of water exchange in the hyporheic zone. Distributed techniques using temperature as a tracer such as fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing can identify the different components of groundwater-surface water interactions based on their spatial and temporal thermal patterns at the sediment-water interface. In particular, groundwater, interflow discharge and local hyporheic exchange flows can be differentiated based on the distinct size, duration and sign of the temperature anomalies. The scale range and resolution of fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing are well complemented by geophysics providing subsurface structures with a similar resolution and scale. Thus, the use of fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing to trace flux patterns supported by the exploration of subsurface structures with geophysics enables spatial and temporal investigation of groundwater-surface water interactions with an unprecedented level of accuracy and resolution. In contrast to the aforementioned methods that can be used for pattern identification at the interface, other methods such as point techniques are required to quantify hyporheic exchange fluxes. In the present PhD thesis, point methods based on hydraulic gradients and thermal profiles are used to quantify hyporheic exchange flows. However, both methods are one-dimensional methods and assume that only vertical flow occurs while the reality is much more complex. The study evaluates the accuracy of the available methods and the factors that impact their reliability. The applied methods allow not only to quantify hyporheic exchange flows but they are also the basis for an interpretation of the sediment layering in the hyporheic zone. For upscaling of the previous results three-dimensional modelling of flow and heat transport in the hyporheic zone combines pattern identification and quantification of fluxes into a single framework. Modelling can evaluate the influence of factors governing groundwater-surface water interactions as well as assess the impact of multiple aspects of model design and calibration of high impact on the reliability of the simulations. But more importantly, this modelling approach enables accurate estimation of water exchange at any location of the domain with unparalleled resolution. Despite the challenges in 3D modelling of the hyporheic zone and in the integration of point and distributed data in models, the benefits should encourage the hyporheic community to adopt an integrative approach comprising from the measurement to the upscaling of hyporheic processes.