Thanos Papanicolaou
IIHR - Hydroscience & Engineering, The University of Iowa

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Application Note: Hydraulic Structures
 
Design and evaluation: Hydraulic structures are typically used for flood control, flood conveyance, irrigation purposes, fish passage, banks protection, navigation, recreation and ecological restoration.   A hydraulic structure must meet the safety, functional and aesthetic goals for its purpose.  Thus, valuation studies must be carried out before and after the construction of the structure to assess its impacts. The structure must be of sufficient size that natural flooding is not worsened and to ensure that the structure can withstand the design flood and remain traversable.  This is required in order to protect the property and residents upstream and downstream of a structure.  In the hydraulic design, one main thing to remember is that water is dynamic.
 
 

Effectiveness of grate: A study was conducted to determine the efficiency of a grate for different orientations under 0% transverse slope conditions.  Specifically, the interception capacity of a rectangular shape grate that is 19.6 inches long and 5.7 inches wide was studied using four different orientation angles.  The 0° orientation represented gutter flow conditions; the 90° orientation represented strictly sheet flow conditions, and the 30° and 60° orientations mixed conditions.  It was found that the efficiency of a grate, under different flow conditions, increased as the angle of the longitudinal axis of the grate with respect to the flow direction increased.  The capturing ability of the grate was reduced as the flow depth upstream of the grate increased.  It was expected that the information gathered here using one grate, can be used to determine the capacity of an integrated system of multiple grates. The outcome of this study was the generation of water interception curves for the above grate orientations and water depths.