Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations GregLocock on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Calculating additional velocity due to gradient

Status
Not open for further replies.

MDBris

Civil/Environmental
Jan 18, 2016
3
Hello all,

I hope that you can help me with a simple problem. Hydraulics is not my thing and I'm probably overthinking things.

I have a 1.8m x 32.5m smooth concrete surfaced footbridge which is now inclined an additional 1.5 degrees; what I would like to know is how does the slope affect the water velocity and what is the equation required to show this?
Essentially I need to ensure that the current spitter pipes are of sufficient capacity to handle the inline.

Many thanks,

Michael
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

I've been looking into this an I think that the Manning equation is probably the option that I should use. Would anyone be able to confirm this please?

v = kn/n R2/3 S1/2
 
Manning's Equation is one appropriate method to compute the velocity of flowing water. The slope should be in (ft/ft) or (m/m) and should represent the longitudinal slope of the conveyance structure you are evaluating. There are numerous books with roughness coefficients (n) that you can use to get your roughness from and the "R" is hydraulic radius (Area/wetted -perimeter). You did not provide enough information, however. What velocity are you seeking the velocity on the bridge or under the bridge? Forgive my misunderstanding; but, what is a spitterpipe?

 
gbam,
Thank you very much for your reply. I purposely didn't include all of the information as I believe certain factors weren't required for my query. I can see now that you may have thought that the structure possibly spanned over water, it doesn't.
The velocity that I was seeking for was the storm water passing across the surface of the footbridge due to the increase in elevation at one end.
To answer your final question, a spitter pipe is essentially a pipe to discharge water. Please see attachment.
MDBris
 
 http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=31de9647-6423-419a-88af-784143fedc61&file=Spitter.jpg
Thanks for the clarification of a spitter pipe.

What flow rate are you using to compute the velocity? Was that computed using rainfall runoff processes?

Oh, I should clarify that the slope used in Manning's Equation is the slope of the Energy Grade; however, for normal flow the slope would be the slope of the channel.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor