ENCV3FB – FLUIDS 3 University of KwaZulu-Natal Duration: 1hour

Test 1 Civil Engineering Marks:

1. If a bridge has an expected life of 45 years and is designed for a flood magnitude of return
period 100 years.
(i) What is the risk of this hydrologic design? [5]
(ii) If a 15% risk is acceptable, what return period will have to be adopted? [5]

2. An urban catchment of area 3.0 km 2. The slope of the catchment is 0.003 and the maximum
length of travel of water is 900 m. If a culvert for drainage at the outlet of this area is to be
designed for a return period of 25 years, estimate the required peak-flow rate, by assuming the
runoff coefficient as 0.3. The maximum depth of rainfall with a 25-year return period is as
given. [10]

Duration (min) 5 10 20 30 40 60
Depth of rainfall (mm) 17 26 40 50 57 62

3. Given the 1mm, 2hr unit hydrograph for a small catchment below, derive and plot 1 hr unit
hydrograph. [10]

Time (hr) 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4

Flow (m3/s) 0 2 4 5 6 4 2 1 0

4. In a rectangular channel (B=4.5m), the minimum specific energy is 1.35m for a certain flow
rate. Calculate the uniform flow depth (yn) if the channel has a bottom slope of S 0 = 0.001 and
Manning’s n = 0.018. Is this uniform flow a critical, subcritical or supercritical flow? (Take
g=10m/s2) [6]
5. What is a permissible velocity in an open channel and explain its importance in channel
design? How different it is for lined and unlined channels? [4]

√
2
v Q T
Fr= =
√ gy g A 3