NCE3205
HYDRAULICS LECTURE
MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION
I. INTRODUCTION
This module will introduce the student about the
subject which is a branch of civil engineering. It will
also show how this subject gives importance with a
particular type of liquid which is water and why it is
important for civil engineers
II. DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT
The student will be asked about how they know about
the following:
A. What is their idea or concept of Mechanics of
Fluid?
B. What is their understanding of Engineering
mechanics in general?
C. Why civil engineers needs a comprehensive
understanding of water?
III. INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
The intended learning outcomes of this module are as
follows:
A. The student should be able to describe what
mechanics of fluid is all about.
B. The student should be able to describe what is the
concept of hydraulics
C. The student should be able to describe the
difference between hydraulics and hydrology
IV. THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
A. What is Fluid Mechanics?
Fluid Mechanics is a branch of Engineering
Mechanics that deals with the forces acting on
or within body of fluids, which was know to exist
either in the form of gas and liquid.
B. What is Hydraulics?
Hydraulics is a branch of fluid mechanics that
deals with the forces that acts on or within water. It
also deals with the forces that acts on objects
due to the movement of or presence of water.
C. What is Hydrology
Hydrology is a branch of environmental science
that deals with the occurrence, location and
movement of water within the planet.
It neither concern with forces except for the
atmospheric pressure which will be a required
parameter in determining the amount of water
vapor in the air
D. Difference between Hydraulics and Hydrology?
Based from the definitions given above, it would be
very obvious that hydraulics deals with forces that
acts on, within and due to water while Hydrology
deals with where the water is.
Both of these are very important to civil engineers
particularly those who would build their career with
respect to the field of water resources engineering.
A hydrologic analysis might involve determining the
amount of runoff from a watershed (i.e., drainage
area) based on the depth and intensity of rainfall
and watershed characteristics such as land cover,
topography, etc.
Hydraulics is more concerned with how water
is conveyed through pipes, channels and other
hydraulic structures.
A hydraulic analysis may involve determining pipe
flow or, in relation to hydrology, the depth of flow in
a channel.
Both Hydrology and Hydraulics concepts are present in this
picture of water flowing over the dam
E. History of Hydraulics
Hydraulics began with the dawn of civilization
when early modern man began to harness water
for their use. It would only be logical to utilize water
for the benefit of mankind because all early
civilization started out along major rivers such as
the Indus, Mesopotamia and Yangtze.
Subsequent settlement of inland areas also
occurred on places that have steady supply of
water such as Angkot Wat and even the Cordilleras
of Luzon ( The Banaue Rice Terreces)
During the early years of human civilization, many
towns and cities are under the mercy of water.
While simple machines were made by various
civilizations (the water wheel) in order to harness
the power of water it was not enough to free itself
from shifting water due to sedimentation and
seismic events. The great Angkor Wat of
Cambodia actually fell not because of defeat but
the collapse of their water supply system. The
Egyptian and the Igorot Culture of the Philippines
actually survived for so long because of the stable
supply of water coming from the Nile River and the
numerous springs of the cordillera mountain
ranges.
One civilization that freed itself from the mercy of
water is the Roman civilization. While it can be said
that the surveying methods of the Romans are
crude (They invented concrete and pavement but
the idea of simple and reverse curves in surveying
are absent to them) they were still able to
developed the now famous roman aqueducts that
would supply water from far away mountains to the
large Roman cities that grew in many places of
Europe.
The Aqueduct of Segovia in Spain. It was functional until the
late 1800’s
While the Romans have demonstrated the
concepts of open channel flow, orifice and
hydrostatic pressure, they are actually clueless
about these in a more technical sense and
therefore the construction of Roman water
structure are simply based on rule of thumbs.
As time goes one the attempt to understand the
forces that acts in water flow has lead to a path of
commonality with Hydrology. During the late middle
ages (1500’s) Leonardo da Vinci
undertook physical experiments, such as
measuring stream velocity, to support his
advanced thoughts about hydrology
A drawing of Da Vinci doing his flow measuring experiment
The 1700’s also mark the time in which
advancement in Hydraulics are made particularly in
pipe friction which was then synonymous with open
channel friction
In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli published the equation for
frictionless pipe flow.
The 18th century brought further progress. Laminar
pipe flow and turbulent river flow were described
by Gotthilf Hagen and Jean Poiseuille respectively
in 1840 (Though it was Osborne Reynolds who
was able to determine the boundary between
Laminar and Turbulent flow)
This lead to Antoine Chézy in 1776 to develop his
open channel equation which, may not be accurate
by today’s standard, still serves as the basis of
modern open channel flow equations
The 1700 saw the application of Bernoulli’s pipe
flow concept when many royal palaces in Europe
utilized fountains to cool and beautify their gardens
and during the industrial revolution many cities in
Europe have utilized water power as a source of
energy to power their machines. This is called the
Hydraulic Power Network
A hydraulic power network is a system of
interconnected pipes carrying pressurized liquid
used to transmit mechanical power from a power
source, like a pump, to hydraulic equipment like
lifts or motors. The system is analogous to an
electrical grid transmitting power from a generating
station to end-users.
The idea of a public hydraulic power network was
suggested by Joseph Bramah in a patent obtained
in 1812. William Armstrong began installing
systems in England from the 1840s, using low-
pressure water, but a breakthrough occurred in
1850 with the introduction of the hydraulic
accumulator, which allowed much higher pressures
to be used.
While the work of Bramah and Armstrong are
innovative even to this day the hydraulic power
network system that were built are not that efficient
because of the lack of understanding with respect
to the pipe friction equation.
The Early 20th century is considered to be the
active years in the development of various
empirical pipe friction equations coming from
various engineers and scientist such as Blasius,
Von Karman, Prandtl and Colebrook. This allows
engineers working with pipes to quantify pipe
friction losses using only empirical equations
however with significant difficulties.
 While simple pipe flows can be analyzed more
easily with the presence of various head loss
equations the question of how much flow is really
present in a pipe that is connected to a series of
loops in which the laws of pipe flow in series and
parallel are not applicable anymore.
In the 1930’s Hardy Cross, a professor of Civil
Engineering at the University of Illinois has
developed a method analyzing a series of beams
and even frames using his now famous Moment
Distribution Method. This analytical method
enables the moment at supports to be determined
in an iterative manner.
V. ASSESSMENT
A. The student will be asked to describe the concept
of fluid mechanics based on what they have
learned in this module
B. The student will be asked to write a detailed report
on various activities that civil engineers are
involved with respect to water resources
engineering
VI. REFERENCES
A. Mechanics of Fluids 4th Edition
M. Potter, D. Wiggert and B. Ramadan
CENGAGE LEARNING 2012

He postulated that the same concept of iteration

could be used to determine the actual flow of pipes
in a given pipe network. This method is now known
as the Hardy cross method.

The age of computers have contributed greatly to

the development of hydraulics. Nowadays it is
possible to model pipe flow in network as well as
the river network over a period of time unlike the
single time method of hardy cross.

The age of computers has also allow the field of

hydraulic to benefit from the capabilities of
Computational Fluid Dynamic in which various
phenomenons such as sedimentation, riverbed
scouring, Natural ventilation, pipe stresses and
even building behavior against typhoon can be
modeled without fabricating actual physical models

F. What do civil engineers do in the field of water

resources engineering?
There list of things that civil engineers can do
which requires the knowledge of hydraulics and
that of hydrology as well are given as follows:
1. Storm Drainage System Planning and Design
2. Waste water Drainage System Planning and
Design
3. Water Supply Planning and Design
4. Flood Control system integration and design
5. Irrigation system planning and design
6. Sedimentation analysis
7. Dam design and maintenance (except for
power generating components)

It should be noted that bridge design is not part of

water resources engineering but it requires
hydraulic and hydrology inputs before the final
design can be completed.