Hydraulic Roughness

Culvert performance curves relate the flow through a culvert to the headwater and tailwater elevations. These curves are calculated differently by the USGS and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), leading to the possibility of significant discrepancies in predicted culvert performance under some flow conditions. The FHWA methodology generally leads to conservative culvert designs relative to designs based on the USGS equations, and the degree of conservatism is the focus of this paper. The largest discrepancies in estimated headwater elevations for given flow rates occur under high-headwater and low-tailwater conditions, and these discrepancies are due in large part to the uncertainty in whether Type 5 or 6 flow will exist. The results of this paper show that for horizontal culverts with square-edge entrances and smooth surfaces the overestimation in the headwater depth can range from 9-45% for headwater depths in the range of 1.5-3 culvert diameters, with lesser overestimations of 7-30% in cases of rounded entrances. The amount of overestimation will be less for high-roughness culverts. In cases for which the culvert is not horizontal, the overestimation, if any, will depend on the slope of the culvert, length-to-diameter ratio, and roughness.

River floodplains in the Netherlands serve as water storage areas, while they also have the function of nature rehabilitation areas. Floodplain vegetation is therefore subject to natural processes of vegetation succession. At the same time, vegetation encroachment obstructs the water flow into the floodplains and increases the flood risk for the hinterland. Spaceborne pointable imaging spectroscopy has the potential to quantify vegetation density on the basis of leaf area index (LAI) from a desired view zenith angle. In this respect, hyperspectral pointable CHRIS data were linked to the ray tracing canopy reflectance model FLIGHT to retrieve vegetation density estimates over a heterogeneous river floodplain. FLIGHT enables simulating top-of-canopy reflectance of vegetated surfaces either in turbid (e.g., grasslands) or in 3D (e.g., forests) mode. By inverting FLIGHT against CHRIS data, LAI was computed for three main classified vegetation types, 'herbaceous', 'shrubs' and 'forest', and for the CHRIS view zenith angles in nadir, backward (−36°) and forward (+36°) scatter direction. The −36° direction showed most LAI variability within the vegetation types and was best validated, closely followed by the nadir direction. The +36° direction led to poorest LAI retrievals. The class-based inversion process has been implemented into a GUI toolbox which would enable the river manager to generate LAI maps in a semiautomatic way.

Field properties-topography, hydraulic resistance, and infiltration-play an important role in the performance of surface irrigation systems, and appropriate characterizations of these are required as data input to simulation or design software. The EWRIIASCE Task Committee on Soil and Crop Hydraulic Properties has been charged with preparing a guide for practitioners faced with such data entry. The result is this special section of the Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering in which this paper is the first in the series presented. It describes the characteristics of these field properties and notes a series of caveats to be considered when dealing with them in the course of analyses or designs of surface irrigation systems.

It is necessary to develop a concrete revetment block which can cater for environment and at the same time it will be effective in protecting river banks (stabilize the slope of banks) from scouring during flood. In the present study, the environmental and hydraulic performance of the proposed revetment block was evaluated through laboratory and field tests. The tested revetment block is called bio-composite because it is composed of concrete, plastic mesh and biological material (coconut husk). The dimensions of the bio-composite revetment block are 400 mm x 400 mm x 100 mm (length x width x thickness) and has a central opening with a dimensions of 280 mm x 140 mm that has a 10 mm layer of coconut husks protected by two layers of plastic mesh. The coconut husk was selected based on laboratory experiments. The experiments showed that the coconut husk is a good media for grass growth and it allows faster growth of grass compared with other tested types of biological wastes (sugar cane husk and oil palm husk). Field tests were conducted on a selected stream which is located at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia. The stream banks were protected from scouring by using the bio-composite blocks and monitoring after installation revealed that rate of grass growth was 15% per week. However, it was found that the rate of grass growth is depends on the slope of stream banks. This confirms that the proposed bio-composite block is friendly to the environment and can give a good aesthetic appearance. For a given water depth, hydraulic tests showed that the value of Manning coefficient of roughness for the bio-composite revetment blocks depends mainly on the rate of grass growth. The values of Manning coefficient roughness for the stream were found to range from 0.031 to 0.055.

Woody riparian vegetation provides numerous ecological benefits such as stabilizing streambanks, storing and cycling nutrients, shading streams and providing habitat for wildlife. However, vegetation also increases hydraulic roughness and reduces the effective flow area, resulting in an increased water surface elevation for a given streamflow. Balancing the desire to preserve woody vegetation in stream corridors with the need to manage flood risks requires accurate techniques for predicting the influence of vegetation on stream hydraulics. However, this is a challenging problem because woody vegetation responds to the flow field itself by bending and streamlining in response to hydraulic forces. The goal of this study was to predict the bending behaviour of woody riparian vegetation as a function of hydraulic flow conditions. Field tests were performed to elucidate tree biomechanical properties for select riparian taxa of the southwestern USA. Biomechanical results served as input parameters for a numerical algorithm designed to predict tree bending for water velocities likely to be encountered during flood events. Bending simulations revealed appreciable variability in bent tree heights. Variability was likely a manifestation of the extensive variance in plant characteristics and properties inherent in biological specimens. However, no trees were expected to bend to a height lower than approximately 42% of their original height, even in water moving at 2.5 mÁs -1 . The results of this work provide an important first step in an effort to predict a dynamic hydraulic roughness for vegetated channels and floodplains under flood conditions.

A subfactor-based regression technique for estimating hydraulic roughness coefficients for shallow overland flow was developed from simulated rainfall/runoff plots originallycollected for erosion studies. The data were collected from 14 different native rangeland areas in the western United States. Rainfall was appliedat a constantintensity of 65mm/hrfrom a rotating-boom rainfall simulator. Surfaces evaluated ranged from smooth bare soil to gravelly bare soil and sparsely to densely vegetated rangeland areas. A reference table of "effective roughness" coefficients for shallow overland flow is presented with a description of site char acteristics. The derived roughness regression equations predict an "effective Darcy-Wiesbach roughness coefficient" for nativerangeland (r2 = 0.70)that incorporates the effect of raindrop impact, soil texture, random roughness, rocks, litter, and canopy and basal plant cover. The sites evaluated in the paper covered a wide range of vegetation types and included short-, mid-, and tallgrass prairies; desert shrubsand sagebrush; and oak and pinyon-juniper woodlands. No trend in effective roughness coefficient associated with type of vegetation (grass or shrub) or soil texture was apparent.

Irrigation practitioners use empirical infiltration equations. Theoretical infiltration equations are currently not capable of capturing surface irrigation infiltration behavior, particularly during initial wetting. For a coarse textured soil, an example is shown where the Green-...

A new model for the depth-averaged velocity for flow in presence of submerged vegetation is developed. The model is based on a two-layer approach, where flow above and through the vegetation layer is described separately. Vegetation is treated as a homogeneous field of identical cylindrical stems and the flow field is considered stationary and uniform. It is demonstrated that scaling considerations of the bulk flow field can be used to avoid complications associated with smaller scale flow processes, and that still the behavior of depth-averaged flow over vegetation is described accurately. The derived scaling expression of the average flow field is simple in form, it follows fundamental laws of fluid flow and it shows very good agreement with laboratory flume experiments. The new model can be used for quick evaluation of a river's hydraulic response in cases where vegetated floodplains are inundated.

1] In this paper we examine the relationships among bedrock properties and hydraulics in shaping bedrock channel morphology at the reach scale. The Ocoee River and four other bedrock streams in the Blue Ridge province of the southeastern United States, which have reach-scale differences in bedrock erodibility controlled by lithologic and structural variation, are the focus of this study. We describe a simple conceptual model for concentrated erosion in bedrock channels and test three hypotheses in order to investigate the interactions among rock erodibility, characteristics of undulating rib-like bed forms, reach-scale gradient, and hydraulic roughness and energy dissipation. Substrate differences correlate with variation in reach morphology (i.e., gradient, bed form orientation, and amplitude), such that less erodible substrates are associated with steeper reach gradient and with transversely oriented ribs of greater amplitude. One-dimensional modeling in HEC-RAS indicated that in the reach with the least erodible substrate and greatest bed slope and rib amplitude, the reach-averaged hydraulic roughness was the greatest. Increased hydraulic roughness in steeper reaches points to the importance of positive and negative feedbacks in these systems: Greater substrate erosional resistance limits profile lowering, which likely creates steeper bed slopes and greater stream power, creating a self-enhancing feedback. This local increase in stream power is balanced by increased roughness resulting from the erosional processes that produce bedrock ribs, which represents a self-regulating feedback. The overall result reflects quantifiable adjustments between substrate resistance and hydraulic driving forces in bedrock channels.

A simple idealized model to describe the hydraulic resistance caused by vegetation is compared to results from flow experiments conducted in natural waterways. Two field case studies are considered: fixed-point flow measurements in a Green River (case 1) and vessel-borne flow measurements along a cross-section with floodplains in the river Rhine (case 2). Analysis of the two cases shows that the simple flow model is consistent with measured flow velocities and the present vegetation characteristics, and may be used to predict a realistic Manning resistance coefficient. From flow measurements in the river floodplain (case 2) an estimate was made of the equivalent height of the drag dominated vegetation layer, as based on measured flow characteristics. The resulting height corresponds well with the observed height of vegetation in the floodplain. The expected depth-dependency of the associated Manning resistance coefficient for could not be detected due to lack of data for relatively shallow flows. Furthermore, it was shown that topographical variations in the floodplain may have an important impact on the flow field, which should not be mistaken as roughness effects.

Herein, a phenomenological theory that unifies the flow resistance caused by a variety of submerged bluff bodies, including cylindrical vegetation, two-dimensional dunes and the roughness elements studied in Schlichting's 1936 experiments, is presented. For the different flow obstructions, scaling relations that relate the equivalent roughness length to the obstructions’ spatial dimensions are derived, by adopting the concepts of the turbulent energy cascade and the momentum thickness in the wake of a bluff body. In the derivation, it is hypothesized that the equivalent roughness height represents the volumetric average of the prevailing turbulence length scale that is present in wakes of the roughness elements. A comparison with experimental literature data indicates that the derived scaling relations capture the dominant dependencies of the equivalent roughness length. These expressions have important engineering applications in large-scale flows where employment of more detailed flow-modelling techniques is not feasible.

Vegetation resistance influences water flow in floodplains. Characterization of vegetation for hydraulic modeling includes the description of the spatial variability of vegetation type, height and density. In this research, we explored the use of dual polarized Radarsat-2 wide swath mode backscatter coefficients (σ°) and Landsat 5 TM to derive spatial hydraulic roughness. The spatial roughness parameterization included four steps: (i) land use classification from Landsat 5 TM; (ii) establishing a relationship between σ° statistics and vegetation parameters; (iii) relative surface roughness (Ks) determination from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) backscatter temporal variability; (iv) derivation of the spatial distribution of the spatial hydraulic roughness both from Manning's roughness coefficient look up table (LUT) and relative surface roughness. Hydraulic simulations were performed using the FLO-2D hydrodynamic model to evaluate model performance under three different hydraulic modeling simulations results with different Manning's coefficient parameterizations, which includes SWL1, SWL2 and SWL3. SWL1 is simulated water

Vegetation resistance influences water flow in floodplains. Characterization of vegetation for hydraulic modeling includes the description of the spatial variability of vegetation type, height and density. In this research, we explored the use of dual polarized Radarsat-2 wide swath mode backscatter coefficients (σ°) and Landsat 5 TM to derive spatial hydraulic roughness. The spatial roughness parameterization included four steps: (i) land use classification from Landsat 5 TM; (ii) establishing a relationship between σ° statistics and vegetation parameters; (iii) relative surface roughness (Ks) determination from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) backscatter temporal variability; (iv) derivation of the spatial distribution of the spatial hydraulic roughness both from Manning's roughness coefficient look up table (LUT) and relative surface roughness. Hydraulic simulations were performed using the FLO-2D hydrodynamic model to evaluate model performance under three different hydraulic modeling simulations results with different Manning's coefficient parameterizations, which includes SWL1, SWL2 and SWL3. SWL1 is simulated water

In this study, the characteristics of near-bed turbulence were experimentally investigated for three distinct roughness regimes, namely (1) isolated;(2) wake interference; and (3) skimming. Spherical particles of the same size and density were placed upon a rough sediment bed to simulate the three regimes. Experimental runs for the aforementioned regimes were performed in a tilting water-recirculating flume. Flow measurements atop the spherical particles were performed by means of a 3D laser Doppler velocimeter. The aim ...