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Pipes that rarely have sufficient flow to self-clean,ģ. Pipes with enough flow and slope to continuously self-clean,Ģ. Using the above equation, the flow would need to be 30 gpm (2 L/s) to provide sufficient tractive stress at a slope of 0.004. Those equations can be solved for the flow needed to achieve adequate self-cleaning.
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The ASCE/WEF manual gives equations for the minimum required slope for a given flow and diameter. (200 mm), and the traditional minimum slope for such a pipe is 0.004 (i.e. In most places, the minimum sewer size is 8 in. The standard reference for sewer design comes from the “10 State Standards” and is repeated in the ASCE/WEF manual mentioned above. It is also possible for the user to include a tractive stress design constraint in the automated design tool. There is no default value, so the user must enter the required tractive stress value, which can be done globally or overridden for a specific pipe. It can also indicate if the required tractive stress would be exceeded at the current time step or any time step. OpenFlows SewerGEMS and SewerCAD can calculate the tractive stress for all pipes for every time step. Calculate tractive stress with OpenFlows products Even if it would be possible to determine the flow for a reasonable minimum design flow, the results may require extremely steep pipes. These flow values are used to determine the minimum slope for pipes to be self-cleaning. 10 gpm, 40 gpm) whenever the expected design flow becomes so small it would result in unrealistically step pipes. There are some places where a regulatory agency will pick some arbitrary flow to use in tractive stress calculations (e.g. But such methods are usually beyond the scope of what sewer designers want (or need) to do. There are some statistical methods like the Poisson Rectangular Pulse model, which classifies every pulse by its magnitude, frequency, and duration and sums them up across customers to develop a flow pattern. In such a case, flow is not continuous but comes in pulses when a customer turns on a washing machine or shower or flushes a toilet. There may only be a handful of customers on the most upstream sewers. Problems occur, however, when one moves up into the uppermost reaches of a collection system. Determining this flow should be relatively easy for reasonable, significantly large flow rates. If the sewer can reach that flow at least briefly during the day, solids should not accumulate. Some engineers would argue that it is the peak flow on a dry day. Which actual flow should an engineer use? The term “design minimum” sounds like a contradiction. The joint ASCE manual of Practice 60/WEF Manual of Practice FD-6, “Gravity Sanitary Sewer Design and Construction-2nd edition” does a very nice job providing graphs and equations to help engineers determine the minimum slope to achieve self-cleaning at the user-specified "design minimum flow rate”. For sewers, these are usually based on 1 mm sand grains and correspond to 0.0181 lb/ft 2 (0.867 N/m 2) and a velocity on the order of 2 ft/s (0.6 m/s). They generally depend on the size and specific gravity of the target solids to be moved. There are several different empirical equations for determining the required tractive stress. The available tractive stress is compared with the required tractive stress to move the solids.
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Where τ = tractive stress, γ= specific weight of water, S = slope, R = hydraulic radius The deeper the water and the steeper the slope, the greater the tractive stress. The available tractive stress is calculated as If tractive stress is sufficient, then the sewers or channels can be considered self-cleaning. If the flow provides sufficient tractive stress, any solids in the flow will not settle out, and any that settled out will begin to move. (Actually, the term “tractive force” is incorrect as “tractive stress” does have units of force per unit area along the pipe wall in the direction of flow.) The principal is simple. The concepts of tractive force design for sewers have been around for a long time.
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