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Introduction
INTRODUCTION
❑ An open channel is a conduit in which a liquid flows with a free surface.
❑ The free surface is actually an interface between the moving liquid and an overlying fluid
medium and will have constant pressure.
❑ In civil engineering applications; water is the most common liquid with air at atmospheric
pressure as the overlying fluid.
❑ As such, our attention will be chiefly focused on the flow of water with a free surface.
❑ The prime motivating force for open channel flow is gravity.
❑ In engineering practice, activities for utilization of water resources involve open channels of
varying magnitudes in one way or the other.
❑ Flows in natural rivers, streams and rivulets; artificial, i.e. man-made canals for transmitting
water from a source to a place of need, such as for irrigation, water supply and hydropower
generation; sewers that carry domestic or industrial waste waters; navigation channels—are all
examples of open channels in their diverse roles.
❑ It is evident that the size, shape and roughness of open channels vary over a sizeable range,
covering a few orders of magnitude.
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INTRODUCTION
❑ Thus the flow in a road side gutter, flow of water in an irrigation canal and flows in the mighty
rivers, such as the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, all have a free surface and as such are open
channels, governed by the same general laws of fluid mechanics.
❑ Basically, all open channels have a bottom slope and the mechanism of flow is akin to the
movement of a mass down an inclined plane due to gravity.
❑ The component of the weight of the liquid along the slope acts as the driving force.
❑ The boundary resistance at the perimeter acts as the resisting force.
❑ Water flow in open channels is largely in the turbulent regime with negligible surface tension
effects.
❑ In addition, the fact that water behaves as an incompressible fluid leads one of appreciate the
importance of the force due to gravity as the major force and the Froude number as the prime
non-dimensional number governing the flow phenomenon in open channels.
TYPES OF CHANNELS
Prismatic and Non-prismatic Channels
❑ A channel in which the cross-sectional shape and size and also the bottom slope are
constant is termed as a prismatic channel.
❑ Most of the man-made (artificial) channels are prismatic channels over long stretches.
❑ The rectangle, trapezoid, triangle and circle are some of the commonly used shapes in
manmade channels.
❑ All natural channels generally have varying cross-sections and consequently are non-
prismatic.
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Rigid and Mobile Boundary Channels
❑ On the basis of the nature of the boundary open channels can be broadly classified
into two types: (i) rigid channels, and (ii) mobile boundary channels.
❑ Rigid channels are those in which the boundary is not deformable in the sense that the
shape, planiform and roughness magnitudes are not functions of the flow parameters.
❑ Typical examples include lined canals, sewers and non-erodible unlined canals.
❑ The flow velocity and shear-stress distribution will be such that no major scour,
erosion or deposition takes place in the channel and the channel geometry and
roughness are essentially constant with respect to time.
❑ The rigid channels can be considered to have only one degree of freedom; for a
given channel geometry the only change that may take place is the depth of flow
which may vary with space and time depending upon the nature of the flow.
❑ This book is concerned essentially with the study of rigid boundary channels.
Rigid and Mobile Boundary Channels
❑ In contrast to the above, we have many unlined channels in alluvium—both manmade
channels and natural rivers—in which the boundaries undergo deformation due to the
continuous process of erosion and deposition due to the flow.
❑ The boundary of the channel is mobile in such cases and the flow carries considerable
amounts of sediment through suspension and in contact with the bed.
❑ Such channels are classified as mobile-boundary channels.
❑ The resistance to flow, quantity of sediment transported, channel geometry and
planiform, all depend on the interaction of the flow with the channel boundaries.
❑ A general mobile-boundary channel can be considered to have four degrees of freedom.
❑ For a given channel not only the depth of flow but also the bed width, longitudinal slope
and planiform (or layout) of the channel may undergo changes with space and time
depending on the type of flow.
❑ Unless specifically stated, the term channel is used in this book to mean the rigid–
boundary channels.
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Thank You
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