unit hydrograph

[engrsalah]

i want to find unit hydrograph for the storm of 500 year return period (which rainfall is 10 inch).i use "curvilinear dimensionless unit hydrograph" and find the discharge.which is 128000 cusec. but when i put the same parameter in hec hms the result is only 40000 cusec discharge. i tried many other data. but the same result come.i.e peach discharge of curvilinear dimensionless unit hydrograph method is too much as compared to hem hms. can any one help me in this regard

 

[psmart]

Based on your post, it appears that you may be manually applying the entire rainfall to the dimensionless unit hydrograph (UH), which is incorrect. There are actually two different curves involved: The UH and the temporal rainfall distribution. The rainfall distribution determines how the rainfall is distributed over time, and specifies the magnitude and timing of the peak rainfall. The UH represents the runoff from a single burst of rainfall of relatively short duration (related to the Tc). To generate a runoff hydrograph, the rainfall is divided into bursts of equal duration, the (SCS) runoff equation is used to determine the volume of runoff for each burst, and the UH is used to generate a runoff hydrograph for each burst. Adding all the individual hydrographs gives the total runoff. As such, the peak runoff is dependent on the characteristics of the UH and the rainfall distribution. Performing this calculation by hand is a non-trivial process.





Peter Smart
HydroCAD Software

http://www.hydrocad.net

 

[engrsalah]

i did the same thing as you mentions. i take the 24 hr distribution from HEC-HMS and apply the formula as present in sheet. kindly go through it

 

[psmart]

There may be other issues, but using a 1-hour time step is going to significantly understate the peak rainfall compared to the 1/10 hour time step commonly used. Even with your fairly long Tc of 1.22 hrs I wouldn't use a time step of more than 1/2 hour.

Retract that - I overlooked the fact that you're using a 6-hour storm, so the time increment may be OK.

HOWEVER, the peak runoff for a 6-hour Type II storm should be roughly between 3 and 4 hours - not 15 hours as shown in your calculations. I would recheck the spreadsheet.

Peter Smart
HydroCAD Software

http://www.hydrocad.net