CEE 452: Hydraulic Analysis and Design

This class focuses on teaching the elements of hydraulic analysis and design of engineering systems such as hydropower plants, spillways, stilling basins, and pipe networks. Students participated in a semester-long hydraulic “widget” project. These projects were designed to augment the course curriculum by helping foster an in-depth understanding of hydraulic concepts while providing critical communication and applied programming skills.

Teams were structured at the beginning of the semester based on similar interests. Team members conceptualized an idea, developed a project proposal based around the three canons of widget project (i.e., hydraulic concepts, technical communication, and coding), and worked together throughout the semester to complete their envisioned widget with guidance from the instructor and technical project advisors. Widget projects span a broad range of interests; from computer code with graphical user interfaces to conducting/analyzing laboratory experiments to creating innovative technologies and analyzing real-life applicability to developing various teaching modules. Below is an executive summary of each team’s widget project.

Instructor:
Dr. Blake Landry

Technical project advisors:
Andy Waratuke
Alexander Bryk
Nils Oberg


Danville Dam Design Project

Team name: Midwest Modelers
Team members:
Project Manager: Kevin Lill
Construction Lead: Sally Jones
Assistant Lead: Jianqiao Fu
Team Member: Jingwei Jin

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to examine the Danville Dam on the Vermillion River in Danville Illinois. Due to the unsafe history exemplified by the three drowning deaths occurring in the last ten years we will explore dam modifications so that it can be safe for larger recreational flows. This hydraulic analysis will focus on the step dam, which is an energy dissipating spillway. After designing the protoype dam, a function for dimensional analysis was coded using Matlab Software and we were able to scale down our design dam for laboratory testing. A model of the prototype dam was constructed and tested in a laboratory flume available at the University of Illinois’s Hydrosystem Laboratory.


Illinois River HPG Widget Project

Team name: HPG Consulting, Inc.
Team members:
Project Manager: Yifan He
Member: Elijah Johnson
Member: Qitao Gao
Member: Keyi Yang

Executive Summary

The main purpose of this project is to create a MATLAB code which is capable of converting Hydraulic Performance Graphs (HPG) into delivery curves. Hydraulic Performance Graphs are useful for computing unsteady flow in river systems. The HPG of a river channel is a graphical correlation between the flow rate and the downstream and upstream river depths. The formulation allows the total carrying capacity of a river to be calculated based on analyzing the river at different stages under gradually varied flow (GVF) conditions. An HPG features several hydraulic performance curves, each for a given discharge, that relate to the upstream and downstream depths of the channel. Delivery curves are derived from HPGs. For a constant upstream/downstream water surface elevation, delivery curve can extract the corresponding downstream/upstream water surface elevation and discharge rate data from HPGs. The relationship between the elevation and discharge rate is then plotted. This method is very useful in real life applications. For example, hydrologists can accurately predict the upstream water elevation for a given discharge rate and downstream water elevation, and hence predict if a flood will occur or not.


Sediment Transport Teaching Module

Team Name: STrEAM
Team members:
Project Manager: Josh Doo
Video Lead: Mike Azzarello
Coding Lead: Melissa Duyar
Research/Teaching Methods Lead: Hector Briceno

Executive Summary

STrEAM’s focus is to develop an effective tool to teach sediment transport to students with no prior sediment transport knowledge. Sediment Transport is not currently included as a course for undergraduate students and we would like to design a way for interested students to learn the subject. Our final product will include an informational workbook with embedded videos that help to expand on difficult concepts and a MATLAB code that will assist students in solving for different sediment loads.


Boneyard Creek Surveying and Hydraulic Analysis

Team members:
Project Manager: Brett Hanson
TeamLab Manager: Genevieve Nemeth
Surveying Lead: Stephen Jacobs
MATLAB Lead: Charles Pugh
HEC-RAS Lead: Carlton Hlasten
Video Lead: Jing Xian Lim

Executive Summary

The Boneyard Creek is a highly urbanized stream that flows through the cities of Champaign and Urbana, Illinois. The main aim of this CEE452 Widget Project is to investigate the channel morphology and flow characteristics of a small reach of the Boneyard Creek which passes through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Engineering Quad before and after sediment fill was placed in the creek in Spring 2012.

Due to the sediment fill in the section just in front of Engineering Hall, there are significant changes in the creek cross-sections. A field survey of the creek cross-sections within the reach of concern was conducted to take into account these changes. Various tools were used to assess the hydraulic performance of the reach. A MATLAB code was used to process the raw data, a HEC-RAS model was used for to compute the gradually varied flow, and finally a HEC-RAS interfaced Hydraulic Performance Graph (HPG) Generator was used to generate HPGs from the working HEC-RAS models. The HPGs from the 2012 and 2013 models were compared to determine the differences in hydraulic behavior of the Boneyard Creek due to the sediment fill.


Hydraulic Section Calculator

Team members:
Project Manager: Kurt Gibson
Software Lead: Mengwei Han
Hydraulic Lead: Robert Wu

Executive Summary

We would like to create a tool that will be able to calculate hydraulic sections. It will output useful information like area, wetted perimeter, flow rate, and a model of the hydraulic section. The user will need to select a shape of the hydraulic section from a dropdown box. We want our code to be able to work for all cross sections, so we are also going to include a user defined shape at the bottom. For this shape, the user will input data points across the channel and our code will output the area, wetted perimeter, and flow rate that corresponds to that unique cross section.


Channel Roughness Calculator

Team members:
Project Manager: Samir Buth
Project Engineer: Avni Jain
Project Engineer: Zheng Li

Executive Summary

The widget project’s primary goal was to develop a calculator in MATLAB that will perform composite roughness coefficient (Manning’s n) calculations and visually depict the variation of compound roughness with water depth in natural channels with different types of cross-sections. The program is expected to be a useful tool for practicing engineers and hydraulic engineering students. There is also future scope for the source code to be improvised and be coupled with other comprehensive software packages. This report outlines the development of the project i.e. the entire coding process with detailed explanation of the logic and functions used, relevant examples as well as analysis and comparison of results.


The Meandering River Project

Team name: The Meandering Barracudas
Team members:
Project Manager: Zack Sasnow
Steering Committee Leader: Dana Wasserman
Member: Caitlin Bolt
Member: Chris DeSilva
Member: Xinxing Li

Executive Summary

The purpose of this project is to collect data about the velocity profiles within the Kinoshita flume using a Vectrino 2 acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV).  The ADV is used to measure the three-dimensional velocity profiles in the meandering river flume. Specifically, this project investigates the effect that three bed forms placed in a curve of the channel have on the velocity profile. These measurements will be taken in the Kinoshita flume located in the Hydrosystems Building.  The Vectrino 2 software will deliver velocity measurements over the span of five minutes in four directions.  When there is a large amount of data accumulated, a code will be written in MATLAB to analyze the information.  One purpose of the code will be to refine the data through removing outliers and interpolating to account for missing data points.  The logical route the coding will take will be to first average each point of data collection to form one vector per location measured.  The code will then take all of the vectors over a profile to produce a contour plot with all of the mean velocity points.  After adding each vertical cross-section together to obtain a three-dimensional profile, integration will solve for the discharge. This will let the data be viewed in an easily comprehendible format, allowing for the effect of bed forms in a meandering river to be understood.


Pipe Network Design

Team name: Pipe Networks Inc.
Team members:
Project Manager: John Gage
Steering Committee: Nicholas Boedihardjo

Executive Summary

The goals of Pipe Networks Inc. for the spring 2012 semester are: learn, apply, and teach the fundamental concepts driving pipe network design. Our motivation behind this project is to make an easily comprehendible teaching module for students interested in distribution networks. The generic outline for the project is to begin with solving a specific pipe network example that will introduce basic pipe flow theory. The network will first be solved using Excel because most students are used to dealing with this programming framework. After solving using excel, loops within MATLAB will be utilized to reinforce the concept and solution technique for pipe networks. The use of MATLAB and Excel will enable students to see the underlying theory behind more complicated programs, such as EPANET. Finally, we will concisely conclude our efforts in an applicable teaching module that includes a technical report covering the theory, a video tutorial of how to use EPANET, and a workbook with an example network to be solved in EPANET.


Pipe Network Solver

Team name: Software Utilization Team
Team members:
Project Manager: Fernando de Juan Astray
Software Analyzer: Roberto Suarez Valle
Hydraulics Lead: Dritan K. Shehi

Executive Summary

The purpose of the Software Development Team is to develop a software tool and promote the use of software in order to solve hydraulic problems related to pipe networks. In this project our team will focus on the methods used to incorporate hydraulic problems in a software package and develop the solution.

Generally inputs in the software will consist of pipe dimensions, pipe lengths, and inflow and outflow points in the network. The software will calculate friction losses and distribution of the flows in the different pipes in the system. The target outputs will consist of flows, velocities, and pressure at joints and links in the network. Another parameter that the software tool will solve is energy prior and post study.


Boneyard Creek Widget Project (emphasis on teaching)

Team name: BLACT Inc.
Team members:
Project Manager/Surveying Lead: Billy Nichols
Co-Modeling Lead: Alec Robertson
Co-Modeling Lead: Lauren Greco
Instructional Video Lead: Caitlin Williams

Executive Summary

Since 1948, the Illinois Water survey has been collecting hydraulic data for Boneyard Creek, a long-term source of flooding in Champaign County. The Boneyard Creek watershed begins in Northwest Champaign, and flows southeast through the University of Illinois Campus and the City of Urbana. The majority of land use in the Boneyard Creek watershed is residential, commercial and industrial. Efforts have been made to mitigate flooding of the creek, but have been counteracted by continued urban development. Sediment deposits, which continue to form from alterations made to the creek path and width, have increased flooding as well.

The objective of this CEE 452 widget project is to analyze the flood capacity and the transformation of the sediment bar in the section of Boneyard Creek, which passes through the UIUC Engineering Quad. Specifically, this section starts from the East side of Wright Street, and continues downstream until the bridge, which houses the Yen Stream flow-Gaging Station. The CEE 452 student team will survey the creek using a total station and will develop a HEC-RAS hydraulic model using the collected data. The project team will present its findings in a technical report and an in-class presentation at the end of the spring 2012 semester. Additionally, the team will create a user guide and instructional video for teaching future CEE 452 students how to survey the creek.


Boneyard Creek Widget Project (emphasis on modeling)

Team name: J-DELL
Team members:
Project Manager: Lindsey Benedeck
Survey Co-Lead: Linzhi Li
Survey Co-Lead: Diane Polydoris
Modeling Lead: Jessica Lambert
Coding Lead: Eileen Walz

Executive Summary

Boneyard Creek is a main element of the Engineering Quad.  The creek passes underneath a bridge and then significantly increases in width. This enlargement has caused a sedimentation bar to form within the channel and water to pool in stagnant ponds during low flow periods. They flow dynamics that cause this formation are not well known and therefore the subject of this project. Better understanding what is happening in this portion of the channel will allow design improvements to be made.

The complex principles encompassed by open channel flow are difficult to model without help from a hydraulic modeling program.  The most applicable program for this project is HEC-RAS.  This program incorporates a variety of hydraulic equations depending on the user input variables.  There are certain assumptions made within the program which will need to be considered throughout the project as they could have a significant impact on results.

Many aspects of civil engineering require hands-on field experimentation.  It is often difficult to obtain this experience through coursework.  Therefore surveying experience obtained through this project will be highly beneficial to all further work done using survey data. Learning a basic hydraulic modeling program is also a valuable skill for studying engineers.

As a main component of the Hydraulic Analysis and Design course students are expected to complete a widget project that encompasses coding, technical writing, and teaching a skill.  Our group elected to survey and model Boneyard Creek in an attempt to better understand the flow and hydraulic processes taking place.  This project will be done during the course of the spring semester 2012 and presented during a final presentation at the end of April.


RIVER DAQ Project

Team members:
Nicholas Möller
Adam Dow
Matt Grzegorzewski
Qina Yan
Hsiu-Chi Ku

Executive Summary

Our group proposes building a stand-alone scalable data acquisition system for waterways, particularly rivers.  This device will be a low cost and simple way to collect data quickly from a variety of waterways.  The RiverDAQ will be composed of primarily an Arduino platform connected to a variety of sensors. In the testing stage, we include sensors of GPS and temperature. And later on, sonar and salinity among many other sensors will be included to satisfy different experimental requirements. The hardware will be housed in a waterproof and floatable case.  The data will be collected and saved to a SD memory card as the device floats downstream, which will then be transferred to a computer program for analysis. We can get velocity from GPS data, and get discharge once we have cross section. We will compare our data with the data of other teams and data from gauge station to see the accuracy of our device. Again, our goal is to get good data with very low cost. Temperature will also available from temperature sensor. Our group will take measurements in the Saline Branch near Crystal Lake Park in Urbana, Boneyard Creek near the Engineering Quad, as well as the Hydrosystems Laboratory as a benchmark.  Our group hopes to complete the unit by Engineering Open House on March 9th, and refine it for our CEE 452 class project afterwards.