USES AND LIMITATIONS

OF UNIT HYDROGRAPH

As the unit hydrographs establish a relationship between the ERH and DRH
for a catchment, they are of immense value in the study of the hydrology of a
catchment.
They are great use in:
The development of flood hydrographs for extreme rainfall magnitudes for
use in the design of hydraulic structures.
Extension of flood-flow records based on rainfall records
Development of flood forecasting and warning systems based on rainfall.

LIMITATIONS
Precipitation must be from rainfall only. Snow-melt runoff cannot be
satisfactory represented by unit hydrograph.
The catchment should not have unusually large storages in terms of tanks,
ponds, large flood banks storages, etc. which affect the linear relationship
between storage and discharge.
If the precipitation is decidedly nonuniform, unit hydrographs cannot be
expected to give good results.

DURATION OF THE UNIT HYDROGRAPH

A rough guide for the choice of duration is that it should not exceed the least of
the:
Time of rise
Basin lag
Time of concentration
A value of D equal to about of the basin lag is about the best choice.
Generally, for basins with areas more than 1200 sq. km. A duration D = 12
hours is preferred.

DISTRIBUTION GRAPH
Introduced by Bernard (1935)
Is a variation of the unit hydrograph
It is basically a D-h unit hydrograph with ordinates showing the percentage of
the surface runoff occurring in successive periods of equal time intervals of
D-h.

SYNTHETIC UNIT
To develop unit hydrographs to a catchment, detailed information about the
rainfall and the resulting flood hydrograph are needed. However, such
information would be available only at a few locations and in a majority of
catchments, especially those which are at remote locations, the data would
normally be scanty. In order to construct unit hydrographs for such areas,
empirical equations of regional validity which relate salient hydrograph
characteristics to the basin characteristics are available. Unit hydrographs
derived from such relationships are known as synthetic-unit hydrograph.

SNYDERS METHOD
Snyder(1938), based on a study of large number of catchments in the
Appalachian Highlands of eastern United States developed a set of empirical
equations for synthetic-unit hydrographs in those areas. These equations are
in use in the USA, and with some modifications in many other countries, and
constitute what is known as Snyders synthetic-unit hydrograph.

SCS DIMENSIONLESS UNIT HYDROGRAPH

Dimensionless unit hydrographs based on a study of a large number of unit
hydrographs are recommended by various agencies to facilitate construction of
synthetic unit hydrographs.

INSTANTANEOUS UNIT HYDROGRAPH

The limiting case of a unit hydrograph of zero duration is known as
instantaneous unit hydrograph (IUH). Thus, IUH is fictitious, conceptual unit
hydrograph which represents the surface runoff from the catchment due to an
instantaneous precipitation of the rainfall excess volume of 1 cm. IUH is
designated as u (t) or sometimes as u (0, t). It is a single peak hydrograph with
a finite base width and its important properties can be listed as: