ASCE has honored Duy Nguyen, Michael Kirkpatrick, Nicholas Williamson, Steven Armfield, and Wenxian Lin with the 2025 Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize for the paper “Effect of Thermal Stratification in Meandering Turbulent Open-Channel Flow with Varying Sinuosity,” Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, September 2023.
This study utilizes a detailed analysis of the first direct numerical simulation (DNS) of thermally stratified open-channel flows through idealized sine-generated meanders with varying sinuosity to enhance our understanding of the impact of thermal stratification on the mean flow, secondary currents, and boundary shear stresses. Four different channel sinuosities Si ¼ ð1.07; 1.34; 2.12; 3.70Þ at a moderate curvature of Rmin=B ¼ 2.5 and channel aspect ratio B=H ¼ 10 with friction Reynolds number Reτ ¼ 200 in neutral and density stratified flows are presented.
The results indicate that thermal stratification has a significant effect on the characteristics of the mean flow, resulting in differences in the separated shear layers and separation zones for different sinuosity, as well as in the bed and sidewall shear stress distributions for both neutral and stratified flows.
The Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize is presented to the author or authors of the paper that is judged to be of superior merit in dealing with a problem of flowing water, either in theory or in practice.
