Influence of Swimming Pool Design on Hydraulic Behavior: A Numerical and Experimental Study

Abstract

<span>A swimming pool can be considered as a chemical reactor with specific hydraulic and macro-mixing characteristics. The nature of flow into the pool depends on various characteristics, such as water inlets and outlets (number and position), pool geometry, and flow rate. This study investigates how swimming pool design affects hydraulic behavior based on experimental and computational fluid dynamics studies (CFD). This paper does not describe the hydraulic behavior of all existing swimming pools, however the cases studied here are representative of pool designs widely used in Europe and the United States. The model developed, based on the principle of a stirred reactor, could be used as a first approach in describing the hydraulic behavior of regular pools. This model is suitable for the study of physical and chemical phenomena with long characteristic times. Other, more advanced, models were shown to be more suitable to the case of fast chemical processes.</span><span></span

Revisiting the Gage–Bidwell Law of Dilution in Relation to the Effectiveness of Swimming Pool Filtration and the Risk to Swimming Pool Users from Cryptosporidium

“…Alansari et al [15] concluded that pools with widely differing configurations of inlets and outlets had residence time distributions (RTD) very similar to that expected for a CSTR, with the exception of there being short-lived spikes in the very early stages of the distribution depending on the small proportion of contaminant that was short-circuiting from the inlets to outlets. Modelling of a pool using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) by Cloteaux et al [16] also led to the conclusion that the residence time distribution obtained from the CFD model of a simple rectangular pool with inlets at the shallow end and outlets (sumps) in the deep end was very similar to that expected for a CSTR. This suggests that the underlying principles of the Gage and Bidwell analysis are a good first approximation of pool behaviour with respect to the removal of particles over timescales of interest (several turnover cycles).…”

Modeling of variations in nitrogen trichloride concentration over time in swimming pool water

“…The model was built taking into consideration the reaction mechanisms, thermodynamic equilibria, physico-chemical properties, and the transfer mechanisms at the pool's surface. A complete study of the hydraulic behavior of the experimental pool was performed by Cloteaux et al (2013). This work consisted in determining hydraulic characteristics (velocity field, stream lines and the corresponding residence time distribution) for this pool using both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental studies.…”

Assessing the Impact of Cyanuric Acid on Bather’s Risk of Gastrointestinal Illness at Swimming Pools

“…Assessment of the risk of infection in swimming pools has typically been based on average pathogen concentrations using a homogeneous isotropic well-mixed assumption [35][36][37][38] but has not used position-dependent mixing models such as turbulent diffusion. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used for swimming pool design and chemical mixing analysis [39,40], but CFD results are specific to a pool's unique design, whereas this paper focusses on the effect of CYA on the risk of infection. To address this issue, a steady-state turbulent diffusion model was developed to provide estimates of the concentration of target microbial pathogens in suspension in pool water in a hypothetical pool with non-distinct dimensions (i.e., a rectangular box).…”