Marshall C. Richmond

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | PNNL · Energy and Environment Directorate

Public Utility District No. 2 of Grant County in Washington operates the 912-MW Priest Rapids facility on the Columbia River. The powerhouse contains 10 Kaplan-type turbines that are more than 50 years old. Plans are under way to install new runners. The Columbia River is a migratory pathway for several species of threatened and endangered juvenile...

Among the hazardous hydraulic conditions affecting anadromous and resident fish during their passage though hydro-turbines two common physical processes can lead to injury and mortality: collisions/blade-strike and rapid decompression. Several methods are currently available to evaluate these stressors in installed turbines, e.g. using live fish or...

The Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) code was parallelized for distributed memory computers using the Global Arrays (GA) programming model. To analyze parallel performance, DHSVM was used to simulate the hydrology in two river basins of significant size located in the northwest continental United States and southwest Canada at 90...

Effective intake flow measurement using a scanning acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) has been successfully demonstrated at Chief Joseph Dam, on the Columbia River, in Washington State. A single downward-looking ADCP was deployed in the emergency gate slot of Unit 15 on a linear traverse system across the span of the intake. Flow profiles wer...

Energetic river and tidal flow environments feature complex hydrodynamic conditions. Conventional acoustic Doppler profiling instrumentation typically requires assumptions of flow homogeneity over the spatial scales of the divergent beam separation. This removes the ability to measure spatio-temporal variability within the flow. However, velocity v...

Hydropower is currently one of the preeminent sources of renewable energy in the United States and globally. Hydropower plants also have detrimental impacts on the environment and ecology, including direct impacts to anadromous fish populations. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) – based Biological Performance Assessment (BioPA) toolset is used...

Quantifying hydrologic exchange fluxes (HEF) at the river and subsurface interface and their residence times (RT) in subsurface are important for managing the water quality and ecosystem health in dynamic river corridor systems. In this study, a modeling framework is developed for coupling the three-dimensional (3D) multi-phase surface, subsurface...

Hydrologic exchange between river channels and adjacent subsurface environments is a key process that influences water quality and ecosystem function in river corridors. Predictive numerical models are needed to understand responses of river corridors to environmental change and to support sustainable watershed management. We posit that systematic...

Quantifying hydrologic exchange fluxes (HEF) and subsurface water residence times (RT) are important for managing the water quality and ecosystem health in dynamic river corridor systems. Laboratory-scale experiments and models have shown that hydrodynamic pressure variations on the riverbed induced by dynamic river flows can strongly impact HEFs a...

This study examined the accuracy of a Lagrangian scheme for simulating both the motion and wall impaction of neutrally buoyant inertial spheres (8.85 ≤ St ≤ 18.04) moving in the subcritical regime (Re = 10,972 and 22,366) of flows past a circular cylinder. The accuracy of the eddy-resolving simulations of the flow field was verified based on availa...

Surrogacy, whereby the response of a representative species subjected to a stressor is applied to one or more species, is commonly used without validation in conservation research and applications. The objective of this study was to empirically evaluate the appropriateness of using morphologically and phylogenetically similar species as surrogates...

Hydrologic exchange flows (HEFs) have environmental significance in riverine ecosystems. Key river channel factors that influence the spatial and temporal variations of HEFs include river stage, riverbed morphology, and riverbed hydraulic conductivity. However, their impacts on HEFs were often evaluated independently or on small scales. In this stu...

Recent alluvial sediments in riverbeds play a significant role in controlling hydrologic exchange flows (HEFs) in river systems. The alluvial layer is usually associated with strong heterogeneity in physical properties (e.g., permeability and hydraulic conductivity), which affects local HEFs and therefore biogeochemical processes. The spatial distr...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) can significantly modulate surface hydrological processes through the extreme precipitation they produce. However, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation of ARs' impact on surface hydrology. This study uses a high‐resolution regional climate simulation to quantify the impact of ARs on surface hydrological processes acr...

Hydroelectric power stations generate turbulent flow conditions, which represent a potentially significant hydraulic stressor to fish passing through the turbine system. A test facility has been developed using two randomly actuated synthetic jet arrays (RASJAs) of 25 independent submersible pumps to generate a turbulent flow field for biological d...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to their paper [...]

River stage fluctuations due to upstream dam operations enhance water exchange between rivers and aquifers. These exchange flows can stimulate biogeochemical processes in the subsurface. Here, we developed a 3‐D numerical model to simulate the flow and transport in a flood plain aquifer within the Hanford Reach, a free‐flowing section of Columbia R...

To increase and maintain existing hydropower capacity within biological performance-based regulations, predictive simulation methods are needed that can reliably estimate the risk to fish passing through flow passage routes at hydropower facilities. One of the central challenges is to validate the software capabilities for simulating the trajectori...

In the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River, a thin layer of recent alluvium overlies the sedimentary formations that comprise the unconfined groundwater aquifer. Experimental and modeling studies have demonstrated that this alluvial layer exerts significant control on the exchange of groundwater and surface water (hydrologic exchange flux), and is...

We quantified the relationship between atmospheric rivers (ARs) and occurrence and magnitude of extreme precipitation in western United States watersheds, using ARs identified by the Atmospheric River Tracking Method Intercomparison Project and precipitation from a high‐resolution regional climate simulation. Our analysis shows the potential of ARs...

We studied the influence of behavior, water velocity, and physiological development on the downstream movement of subyearling fall-run Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha in both free-flowing and impounded reaches of the Clearwater and Snake rivers as potential mechanisms that might explain life history diversity in this stock. Movement rates a...

The United States is home to 2198 dams actively used for hydropower production. With the December 2015 consensus adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement, it is important to accurately quantify anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Methane ebullition, or methane bubbles originating from river or lake s...

Hydropower is the most common form of renewable energy, and countries worldwide are considering expanding hydropower to new areas. One of the challenges of hydropower deployment is mitigation of the environmental impacts including water quality, habitat alterations, and ecosystem connectivity. For fish species that inhabit river systems with hydrop...

Studies of the stress/survival of migratory fish during downstream passage through operating hydro-turbines are normally conducted to determine the fish-friendliness of the hydro-turbine units. This study applies a modelling strategy based on flow simulations using computational fluid dynamics and Lagrangian particle tracking to represent the trave...

Columbia River water elevations and flows in the Hanford Reach affect the environment and facilities along the shoreline, including movement of contaminants in groundwater, fish habitat, and infrastructure subject to flooding. This report describes the hydraulic simulation of hypothetical flood flows using the best available topographic and bathyme...

Standards provide recommendations for best practice when installing current meters to measure fluid flow in closed conduits. A central guideline requires the velocity distribution to be regular and the flow steady. Because of the nature of the short converging intakes typical of low-head hydroturbines, these assumptions may be invalid if current me...

The range of hydrodynamic operating conditions to which a hydropower turbine is exposed results in significant pressure fluctuations on both the pressure and suction sides of its blades. Understanding these dynamic pressures and their effects has a range of applications. Structurally, the resulting dynamic loads are significant in understanding the...

The tidal currents at Sequim Bay inlet have been characterized using a vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). A total of 17 surveys were performed from Tuesday, 29 September to Thursday, 1 October, and captured the peak tidal flows in both the ebb and flood directions with velocity magnitudes up to 1.5 m/s. The measured velocities...

Multiple numerical approaches have been developed to simulate porous media fluid flow and solute transport at the pore scale. These include 1) methods that explicitly model the three-dimensional geometry of pore spaces and 2) methods that conceptualize the pore space as a topologically consistent set of stylized pore bodies and pore throats. In pre...

Standards provide recommendations for the best practices in the installation of current meters for measuring fluid flow in closed conduits. These include PTC-18 and IEC-41 . Both of these standards refer to the requirements of the ISO Standard 3354 for cases where the velocity distri- bution is assumed to be regular and the flow steady. Due to the...

Accurate modeling of the velocity field in the forebay of a hydroelectric power station is important for both power generation and fish passage, and is able to be increasingly well represented by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) are investigated herein as a method of validating the numerical f...

In this work, we combined the use of (i) overset meshes, (ii) a 6 degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) motion solver, and (iii) an eddy-resolving flow simulation approach to resolve the drag and secondary movement of large-sized cylinders settling in a quiescent fluid at moderate terminal Reynolds numbers (1500<Re<28,000) . These three strategies were impleme...

Rapid pressure changes in hydroelectric turbine flows can cause barotrauma that can be hazardous to the passage of fish, in particular migratory juvenile salmonids. Although numerous laboratory tests have evaluated the effect of rapid decompression in fish species of relevance, numerical modeling studies offer the advantage of predicting, for new t...

An array of single-beam acoustic Doppler profilers has been developed for the high resolution measurement of three-dimensional tidal flow velocities and subsequently tested in an energetic tidal site. This configuration has been developed to increase spatial resolution of velocity measurements in comparison to conventional acoustic Doppler profiler...

The use of acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) for the characterization of flow conditions in the vicinity of both experimental and full scale marine hydrokinetic (MHK) turbines is becoming increasingly prevalent. The computation of a three dimensional velocity measurement from divergent acoustic beams requires the assumption that the flow c...

Pore-scale models are useful for studying relationships between fundamental processes and phenomena at larger (i.e., Darcy) scales. However, the size of domains that can be simulated with explicit pore-scale resolution is limited by computational and observational constraints. Direct numerical simulation of pore-scale flow and transport is typicall...

Summer temperatures in the Lower Snake River can be altered by releasing cold waters that originate from deep depths within Dworshak Reservoir. These cold releases are used to lower temperatures in the Clearwater and Lower Snake Rivers and to improve hydrodynamic and water quality conditions for migrating aquatic species. This project monitored the...

In 2003, an extension of the existing ice and trash sluiceway was added at Bonneville Powerhouse 2 (B2). This extension started at the existing corner collector for the ice and trash sluiceway adjacent to Bonneville Powerhouse 2 and the new sluiceway was extended to the downstream end of Cascade Island. The sluiceway was designed to improve juvenil...

The spill environment at The Dalles Dam in 2001-2004 was characterized using a field-deployed autonomous sensor (the so-called Sensor Fish), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, and Lagrangian particle tracking. The sensor fish has a self-contained capability to digitally the record pressure and triaxial accelerations it was exposed to foll...

This report presents the results of a modeling assessment of likely lamprey larval habitat that may be impacted by dewatering of the major tributary delta regions in the Bonneville Pool of the Columbia River. This assessment was conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Portland District (CEN...

The occurrence, frequency, and intensity of blade-strike of fish on an axial-flow marine hydrokinetic turbine was simulated using two modeling approaches: a novel scheme combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with Lagrangian particle tracking, and a conventional kinematic model. The kinematic model included simplifying assumptions of fish tra...

The Hanford Reach, located in south-central Washington State, is the only remaining unimpounded reach of the Columbia River in the United States upstream of Bonneville Dam. The Columbia River upstream of the Hanford Reach is heavily regulated by upstream storage reservoirs (Grand Coulee Dam and several Canadian impoundments) and six run-of-river hy...

Four sets of nonreactive solute transport experiments were conducted with micromodels. Each set consisted of three experiments with one variable, i.e., flow velocity, grain diameter, pore-aspect ratio, and flow-focusing heterogeneity. The data sets were offered to pore-scale modeling groups to test their numerical simulators. Each set consisted of...

Velocity spectra are essential in characterizing turbulent flows. The Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) provides three-dimensional time series data at a single point in space which are used for calculating velocity spectra. However, ADV data are susceptible to contamination from various sources, including instrument noise, which is the intrinsic l...

We introduce a method for hydro turbine biological performance assessment (BioPA) to bridge the gap between field and laboratory studies on fish injury and turbine engineering design. Using this method, a suite of biological performance indicators is computed based on simulated data from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a proposed hydr...

Microbes play an important role in facilitating organic matter decomposition in soils, which is a major component of the global carbon cycle. Microbial dynamics are intimately coupled to environmental transport processes, which control access to labile organic matter and other nutrients that are needed for the growth and maintenance of microorganis...

A significant body of current research is aimed at developing methods for numerical simulation of flow and transport in porous media that explicitly resolve complex pore and solid geometries, and at utilizing such models to study the relationships between fundamental pore-scale processes and macroscopic manifestations at larger (i.e., Darcy) scales...

Field measurements of turbulence are presented from two sites in Puget Sound, WA, that are proposed for electrical power generation using tidal current turbines. Time series data from multiple acoustic Doppler instruments are analyzed to obtain statistical measures of fluctuations in both the magnitude and direction of the tidal currents. The resul...

Geomechanical alteration of porous media is generally ignored for most shallow subsurface applications, whereas CO2 injection, migration, and trapping in deep saline aquifers will be controlled by coupled multifluid flow, energy transfer, geomechanical, and geochemical processes. The accurate assessment of the risks associated with potential leakag...

Field measurements are essential for developing an improved understanding of turbulent inflow conditions that affect the design and operation of marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) devices. The Marrowstone Island site in Puget Sound, Washington State is a potential location for installing MHK devices, as it experiences strong tides and associated current...

The Hanford Reach of the Columbia River is located in southeastern Washington State (USA) and extends from Priest Rapids Dam (Rkm 639) to the head of McNary Pool (Rkm 557). This 82 kilometer reach supports one of the largest spawning populations of fall Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest, which is highly valued for its ecological function and...

In this paper, a method for turbine biological performance assessment is introduced to bridge the gap between field and laboratory studies on fish injury and turbine design. Using this method, a suite of biological performance indicators is computed based on simulated data from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a proposed turbine design...

Flows at Priest Rapids Dam on the Columbia River, U.S.A. are currently managed to protect the spawning, incubation, and rearing life-stages of Hanford Reach fall Chinook salmon. However, a thorough understanding of the relationship between flow and freshwater life-stage dynamics limits the ability of fisheries managers to evaluate alternative flow...

The biological response of fish to turbine passage has been of concern for several decades and emphasized recently by consideration of hydro as a 'green' power source. The current state-of-the-art of hydro-turbine biological performance assessment, while still inadequate, has advanced considerably the past 10 years. For example, the importance of a...

Safe fish passage affects not only migratory species, but also populations of resident fish by altering biomass, biodiversity, and gene flow. Consequently, it is important to estimate turbine passage survival of a wide range of susceptible fish. Although fish-friendly turbines show promise for reducing turbine passage mortality, experimental data o...

The US Army Corps of Engineers Portland District (CENWP) has developed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the John Day forebay on the Columbia River to aid in the development and design of alternatives to improve juvenile salmon passage at the John Day Project. At the request of CENWP, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Hydrolo...

Understanding the impacts of climate change on stream temperature is essential to planning and future management of water resources to satisfy competing water uses without compromising the sustainability of riverine ecosystems. This requires specification of spatially distributed meteorological input data such as air temperature and solar radiation...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Portland District (CENWP) has ongoing work to improve the survival of juvenile salmonids (smolt) migrating past The Dalles Dam. As part of that effort, a spillwall was constructed to improve juvenile egress through the tailrace downstream of the stilling basin. The spillwall was designed to improve smolt survival by...

Using newly collected data from a tidal power site in Puget Sound, WA, metrics for turbulence quantification are assessed and discussed. Of particular interest is the robustness of the “turbulent intensity,” defined as the ratio of velocity standard deviation to velocity mean. Simultaneously, the quality of raw ping Acoustic Doppler Current Profile...

Hydropower is the largest renewable energy resource in the United States and the world. However, hydropower dams have adverse ecological impacts because migrating fish may be injured or killed when they pass through hydroturbines. In the Columbia and Snake River basins, dam operators and engineers are required to make those hydroelectric facilities...

Juvenile salmon can be injured and killed when they pass through hydroelectric turbines and other downstream passage alternatives. The hydraulic conditions in these complex environments that pose a risk to the health of fish include turbulent shear flows, collisions with hydraulic structures, cavitation, and rapid change of pressure. Improvements i...

Adult steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss tagged with archival transmitters primarily migrated through a large river corridor at depths >2 m interspersed with frequent but short (<5 min) periods closer to the surface. The recorded swimming depths and behaviours probably provided adequate hydrostatic compensation for the supersaturated dissolved gas condi...

Although fisheries biology studies are frequently performed at US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) projects along the Columbia and Snake Rivers, there is currently no consistent definition of the ``forebay'' and ``tailrace'' regions for these studies. At this time, each study may use somewhat arbitrary lines (e.g., the Boat Restriction Zone) to defi...

River waters downstream of a hydroelectric project are often subject to rapidly changing discharge. Abrupt decreases in discharge can quickly dewater and expose some areas and isolate other areas from the main river channel, potentially stranding or entrapping fish, which often results in mortality. A methodology is described to estimate the areas...

At The Dalles Dam, located between Oregon and Washington on the Columbia River, juvenile salmon passing over the spillway have a survival rate that is below acceptable levels. An important factor affecting survival is the egress route fish take through the immediate tailrace of the dam. Passage through the high-energy spillway and stilling basin en...

Juvenile fall Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawythscha) and an autonomous sensor device (Sensor Fish) were exposed to turbulent shear flows to determine how hydraulic conditions affected fish injury response. Studies were designed to establish correlation metrics between Sensor Fish device measurements and live fish injuries by conducting concurre...

This study provides information on juvenile salmonid behaviors at McNary and The Dalles dams that can be used by the USACE, fisheries resource managers, and others to support decisions on long-term measures to enhance fish passage. We researched smolt movements and ambient hydrodynamic conditions using a new approach combining simultaneous acoustic...

The Kansas City District of the US Army Corps of Engineers is engaged in a broad range of river management projects that require knowledge of spatially-varied hydraulic conditions such as velocities and water surface elevations. This information is needed to design new structures, improve existing operations, and assess aquatic habitat. Two-dimensi...

Pore-scale simulations of flow, transport, and reactions in porous media (in which the geometry of solid grains and pore spaces is explicitly quantified) are being used to demonstrate links between microscopic and macroscopic phenomena. We have developed pore-scale models of saturated and unsaturated flow, and of reactive transport in saturated med...

Juvenile Snake River fall Chinook salmon (Oncorhyncus tshawytscha) typically emigrate as age-0 fish from the Snake River to the Pacific Ocean between early June and September, with the majority of the fish swimming seaward between mid-June and mid-July. The fish emigrating later in the season have a higher likelihood of remaining in freshwater for...

Dams impact the survival of juvenile anadromous fishes by obstructing migration corridors, lowering water quality, delaying migrations, and entraining fish in turbine discharge. To reduce these impacts, structural and operational modifications to dams— such as voluntary spill discharge, turbine intake guidance screens, and surface flow outlets—are...

Pore-scale colloid movement was observed in microfluidic cells with variable flow rate and pore geometry. Colloid particles were observed to be mostly excluded from certain regions in the pore space, and the geometry of the excluded regions was observed to vary with flow velocity. High resolution numerical simulations of three- dimensional flow and...

Pore-scale simulations of flow, transport, and reactions in porous media (in which the geometry of solid grains and pore spaces is explicitly quantified) are being used to demonstrate links between microscopic and macroscopic phenomena. A diverse set of simulation methods have been developed including pore network models, Lattice-Boltzmann models,...

Fish passing through dams may be injured or killed despite advances in turbinedesign, project operations and other fish bypass systems. The six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF)Sensor Fish device is an autonomous sensor package that characterizes the physical conditionsand physical stresses to which fish are exposed when they pass through complex hydraulice...

Bio-indexing of hydro turbines is an important means to optimize passage conditions for fish by identifying operations for existing and new design turbines that minimize the probability of injury. Cost-effective implementation of bio-indexing requires the use of tools such as numerical and physical turbine models to generate hypotheses for turbine...

Gas bubble disease (GBD) has been recognized as a potential problem for fishes in the Columbia River basin. GBD results from exposure to gas supersaturated water created by discharge over dam spillways. Spill creates a downstream plume of water with high total dissolved gas supersaturation (TDGS) that may be positioned along either shore or mid-cha...

This paper, the second part of a 2 part paper, discusses the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to gain further insight into the results of fish release testing conducted to evaluate the modifications made to upgrade Unit 8 at Wanapum Dam. Part 1 discusses the testing procedures and fish passage survival. Grant PUD is working with Voith Siem...

This report summarizes the results of studies sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to evaluate the biological performance (likelihood of injury to fish) from an advanced design turbine installed at Unit 8 of Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State in 2005. PNNL studies inclu...