´¡²ú²õ³Ù°ù²¹³¦³Ù:ÌýSelf-aeration in high-velocity flows on spillway chutes is a critical phenomenon for preventing cavitation damage and ensuring structural safety. This talk will present recent advances in understanding and predicting air entrainment in the developing aerated flow region between the inception point and equilibrium conditions. Through systematic large-scale experiments at ETH Zurich with varied chute slopes and invert roughness configurations, the research demonstrates that inner-wall turbulence plays a decisive role in air entrainment alongside chute slope effects. An improved physics-based model with a novel closure relation accounting for local Froude number and invert roughness will be presented. Additionally, corrected interfacial turbulence intensity measurements, representing the first quantitative characterization of turbulence in self-aerated spillway flows, provide a benchmark dataset for future numerical model development. These findings enable more reliable prediction of cavitation-critical zones and overtopping risks for robust spillway design.
µþ¾±´Ç:ÌýMatthias Bürgler holds a BSc and MSc in Environmental Engineering and a Dr. sc. degree from ETH Zurich (2025), where he conducted research on self-aerated flows on spillway chutes at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology. He received the ETH Medal for his master’s thesis on numerical simulations of two-phase flow in low-level outlets. His doctoral research advanced the understanding of turbulence effects on self-aeration and established novel approaches for predicting air entrainment on spillway chutes. His research interests include experimental hydraulics, air-water flows, and numerical modelling of free-surface flows. He currently works as a software engineer at ETH Zurich, developing the hydro- and morphodynamic modelling software BASEMENT ().