Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Hydrologic and Hydraulic Design

In course

ENV-221: Hydrology for engineers

This is an introductory course to key concepts and methods in physical and engineering hydrology. ...

Description

This lecture covers the translation of hydrologic design values into water stage signals, the determination of discharge rating curves, and the analysis of flood control measures, including floodplain management and flood hazard reduction. It also delves into open-channel flow analysis, steady and unsteady flow models, and the calculation of discharge based on uniform-flow relations. The lecture explores the concepts of stage-discharge relations, bottom shear stress, and the roughness coefficient in hydraulic design. Additionally, it discusses the celerity of flood propagation, the limits of stage-discharge curves, and the kinematic wave approximation for overland flow.

This video is available exclusively on Mediaspace for a restricted audience. Please log in to MediaSpace to access it if you have the necessary permissions.

Watch on Mediaspace

Instructors (3)

Andrea Rinaldo

Paolo Benettin

I was born in Padova, Italy, in 1986. After high school, I started the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Padova (Bachelor and Master), where I followed the 'soil protection' curriculum. During my Master studies I spent a semester as Erasmus student at Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) to follow courses in Hydrology. After graduation, I decided to bring my education further and I started a Ph.D. at the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Padova. My Ph.D. thesis focused on hydrologic transport and travel time distributions at the catchment scale. My contribution to the subject included both new theoretical formulations and extensive numerical applications to real catchments. During my Ph.D., I also spent 7 months as visiting research fellow at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, USA). Since I arrived at EPFL as post-doc in 2015, I started being involved in field and experimental activities, which allowed me to learn about practical experimental problems. In 2017 I had the opportunity to by hired by the ECHO laboratory as a permanent scientist, conducting research in the field of catchment hydrology.

Sara Bonetti

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Mechanics: Fluid mechanics

Related concepts (32)

Fluid dynamics

In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including aerodynamics (the study of air and other gases in motion) and hydrodynamics (the study of liquids in motion). Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modelling fission weapon detonation.

Open-channel flow

In fluid mechanics and hydraulics, open-channel flow is a type of liquid flow within a conduit with a free surface, known as a channel. The other type of flow within a conduit is pipe flow. These two types of flow are similar in many ways but differ in one important respect: open-channel flow has a free surface, whereas pipe flow does not. Open-channel flow can be classified and described in various ways based on the change in flow depth with respect to time and space.

Hydraulic machinery

Hydraulic machines use liquid fluid power to perform work. Heavy construction vehicles are a common example. In this type of machine, hydraulic fluid is pumped to various hydraulic motors and hydraulic cylinders throughout the machine and becomes pressurized according to the resistance present. The fluid is controlled directly or automatically by control valves and distributed through hoses, tubes, or pipes.

Potential flow

In fluid dynamics, potential flow (or ideal flow) describes the velocity field as the gradient of a scalar function: the velocity potential. As a result, a potential flow is characterized by an irrotational velocity field, which is a valid approximation for several applications. The irrotationality of a potential flow is due to the curl of the gradient of a scalar always being equal to zero. In the case of an incompressible flow the velocity potential satisfies Laplace's equation, and potential theory is applicable.

Stokes flow

Stokes flow (named after George Gabriel Stokes), also named creeping flow or creeping motion, is a type of fluid flow where advective inertial forces are small compared with viscous forces. The Reynolds number is low, i.e. . This is a typical situation in flows where the fluid velocities are very slow, the viscosities are very large, or the length-scales of the flow are very small. Creeping flow was first studied to understand lubrication. In nature, this type of flow occurs in the swimming of microorganisms and sperm.

Related lectures (52)

Navier-Stokes Equations: Approximations and Solutions

Explores solving Navier-Stokes equations through approximations and special cases in fluid dynamics.

Symmetries and Conservation Laws

Covers symmetries and conservation laws in fluid dynamics, emphasizing the importance of maximizing symmetries in ideal fluid systems.

Fluid Mechanics Fundamentals

Introduces the fundamentals of fluid mechanics, covering mass and momentum conservation, external forces, viscous stresses, and the conversion of surface integrals to volume integrals.

Fluid Dynamics: Differential Conservation Laws and Equations

Covers the differential approach to fluid dynamics, focusing on conservation laws and the Cauchy stress tensor.

Annual Flood Flow Analysis: Gumbel Method