MULTIMEDIA LIBRARY

GEOPHYSICAL HYDRAULICS

(culvert1.wmv - 449 KB)

A culvert is a covered channel of relatively short length designed to pass water through an embankment (e.g. highway, railroad, dam). It is a hydraulic structure and it may carry flood waters, drainage flows, natural streams below earthfill and rockfill structures. From a hydraulic aspect, a dominant feature of a culvert is whether it runs full or not.

The design can vary from a simple geometry (i.e. box culvert) to a hydraulically-smooth shape (i.e. Minimum Energy Loss culvert) (Chanson 2004).

The video shows the flow in a box culvert (barrel width : 0.15 m). for a discharge less than the design flow rate. The model is in perspex . The video shows first the inflow, the barrel flow and later the outflow. The movie was taken in the Gordon McKay Hydraulics Laboratory of the University of Queensland.

Video taken of Dr Hubert Chanson, Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Australia in 2001. All coyrights reserved.

Reference: CHANSON, H. (2004). "The Hydraulics of Open Channel Flows: An Introduction." Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 2nd edition, 630 pages (ISBN 0 7506 5978 5).