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Engineers need to be able to predict how water will behave in order to design structures that manage or control it. And fluids don’t always behave the way you’d expect. On this episode, we’re talking about one of the most interesting phenomena in open-channel flow: the hydraulic jump.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Hydraulics Hydraulic jump
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
A weir is a small dam built across a river to control the upstream water level. Weirs have been used for ages to control the flow of water in streams, rivers, and other water bodies. Unlike large dams which create reservoirs, the goal of building a weir across a river isn’t to create storage, but only to gain some control over the water level. Over time, the term weir has taken on a more general definition in engineering to apply to any hydraulic control structure that allows water to flow over its top, often called its crest. In fact, the spillways of many large dams use weirs as control structures. So how do they work?
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Dams Hydraulics Weirs
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
Dams serve a wide variety of purposes from hydropower to flood control to storage of water for municipal and industrials uses. But when a dam’s useful purpose fades away, the structure itself still remains. Dams come in all shapes and sizes, but contrary to what you might think, the most dangerous dams are often the smallest, also known as low head dams.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Dam safety Dams Hydraulics
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
This video gives a quick overview of how we build underwater structures. Oceans, rivers, and lakes are often beautiful, but they’re not necessarily convenient places to build things. Yet, many types of the infrastructure we depend on every day, including wharves, bridges, and dams, are founded below the water. How do they do it? On this episode, we're talking about different types of underwater construction, including cofferdams, diversions, caissons, and drilled shafts. Whether the construction site is on the bottom of a lake or river, or simply located in the floodplain and only at risk during extreme weather, engineers and construction contractors put a significant amount of thought and consideration into the feasibility and costs of managing this water.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Underwater construction Hydraulic engineering
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
We normally build a dam to hold water back and store it for use in water supply, irrigation, hydropower, or flood control. But sometimes we have to let some water go. Whether we need it downstream or the impounded water behind the dam is simply too full to store any more, nearly every dam needs a spillway to safely discharge water. The spillway is a critical part of any dam and often the most complex component. So how does it work?
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Hydraulic structures Spillways Dams Reservoirs Diversion structures (Hydraulic engineering)
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
The vast majority of our grid-scale storage of electricity uses this clever method. Electricity faces a fundamental problem that comes with pretty much any product that’s provided on-demand: our ability to generate large amounts of it doesn’t match up that closely with when we need it. The storage of electricity for later use, especially on a large scale, is quite challenging. That’s not to say that we don’t store energy at grid scale though, and there’s one type of storage that makes up the vast majority of our current capacity.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering
- Keywords:
- Energy storage Water-power Pumped storage power plants
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
In civil engineering, quicksand is more than just a puddle of mud! The "quick condition" occurs when seepage reduces the effective stress of a soil. This can lead to some dangerous conditions, especially if the seepage causes piping erosion to occur at a dam.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Seepage Dam failures Quicks Fluid mechanics
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
Almost everyone agrees that flooding is bad. Most years it’s the number one natural disaster in the US by dollars of damage. So being able to characterize flood risks is a crucial job of civil engineers. Engineering hydrology has equal parts statistics and understanding how society treats risks. Water is incredibly important to us, and it shapes almost every facet of our lives, but it’s almost never in the right place at the right time. Sometimes there’s not enough, like in a drought or just an arid region, but we also need to be prepared for the times when there’s too much water, a flood. Rainfall and streamflow have tremendous variability and it’s the engineer’s job to characterize that so that we can make rational and intelligent decisions about how we develop the world around us.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering and Disaster Control and Management
- Keywords:
- Floods Hydrology Flood control -- Management
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
This video gives a quick description and demo of this ingenious pump. A hydraulic ram is a clever device invented over 200 years ago that can pump water uphill with no other external source of power except for the water flowing into it and there is a way to take advantage of this normally inauspicious effect for a beneficial use. The ram pump is an ingenious way to take advantage of the properties of fluids. We all need water for a variety of reasons, so being able to move it where we need it without any fancy equipment or external sources of power is a pretty nice tool to have in your toolbox.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Hydraulic rams Pumping machinery
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
This video gives a brief overview of this ingenious method of compressing air using only the power of water. The way a trompe harnesses the power of water to generate compressed air with no moving parts is fascinating and its use is seeing a small revival in modern days. A trompe can be useful in off-grid aquaponics and hydroponic systems that need aeration of the water. And, in fact, the inspiration for this video came from the late Bruce Leavitt, a mining engineer who pioneered the use of small trompes for aeration and treatment of mining water in remote locations without access to electricity.
- Subjects:
- Hydraulic Engineering
- Keywords:
- Air-compressors Compressed air Water-power Fluid dynamics
- Resource Type:
- Video