The Hydraulics of Open Channel Flow: An Introduction Second Edition

Abstract

The book is an introduction to the hydraulics of open channel flows. The material is designed for undergraduate students in civil, environmental and hydraulic engineering. It will be assumed that the students have had an introductory course in fluid mechanics and that they are familiar with the basic principles of fluid mechanics: continuity, momentum, energy and Bernoulli principles. The book will first develop the basic principles of fluid mechanics with applications to open channels. Open channel flow calculations are more complicated than pipe flow calculations because the location of the free-surface is often unknown a priori (i.e. beforehand). Later the students are introduced to the basic concepts of sediment transport and hydraulic modelling (physical and numerical models). At the end of the course, the design of hydraulic structures is introduced. The book is designed to bring a basic understanding of the hydraulics of rivers, waterways and man-made canals to the reader (e.g. Plates 1–32). The lecture material is divided into four parts of increasing complexity: Part 1. Introduction to the basic principles. Application of the fundamental fluid mechanics principles to open channels. Emphasis on the application of the Bernoulli principle and momentum equation to open channel flows. Part 2. Introduction to sediment transport in open channels. Basic definitions followed by simple applications. Occurrence of sediment motion in open channels. Calculations of sediment transport rate. Interactions between the sediment motion and the fluid motion. Part 3. Modelling open channel flows. The two types of modellings are physical modelling and numerical modelling of open channel flows: ● Physical modelling: application of the basic principles of similitude and dimensional analysis to open channels. ● Numerical modelling: numerical integration of the energy equation; one-dimensional flow modelling. Part 4. Introduction to the design of hydraulic structures for the storage and conveyance of water. Hydraulic design of dams, weirs and spillways. Design of drops and cascades. Hydraulic design of culverts: standard box culverts and minimum energy loss culvert. Basic introduction to professional design of hydraulic structures. Application of the basic principles to real design situations. Analysis of complete systems. Applications, tutorials and exercises are grouped into four categories: applications within the main text to illustrate the basic lecture material, exercises for each chapter within each section, revision exercises using knowledge gained in several chapters within one section and major assignments (i.e. problems) involving expertise gained in several sections: e.g. typically Part I and one or two other sections. In the lecture material, complete and detailed solutions of the applications