WSP01998

• File Number: 5970
• Description: Flood Protection Section - Miscellaneous Reports
• State: CO
• Basin: Statewide
• Date: 12/1/1972
• Author: CSU
• Title: Theory and Experiments in the Prediction of Small Watershed Response - Completion Report Series Number 42
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

01)1242

5

1.

Disturbed turbulent,

Disturbed laminar,

2.
3.
4.

Turbu 1 ent ,

Laminar.

KINEMATIC WAVE THEORY

The kinematic wave approximations were first applied to the problem

of overland flow by Iwagaki (1955). Veal (1966) and Woolhiser (1969)

have proposed the overland flow on a natural watershed could be repre-

sented by a linearly converging surface such as a segment of a cone.
(It was Veal's thesis that provided the analytical basis for the design
of the conic sector watershed in the CSU Experimental Facility).

The kinematic wave equations for unsteady flow over a linearly con-

verging surface are:

~+ouh=q(x,t)+ h
ot oX (Lo-x)

and

n- 1
u = ah

the coefficient a can be evaluated using the Darcy-Weisbach relationship:

a=~
, f 0

and the exponent term, n, is

n = 3/2

Figure 1 is a diagram in which the terms of these equations are defined.

Experimental verification of these equations using data from the CSU

Experimental Rainfall-Runoff Facility was reported by Woolhiser et al.

(1971) .