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Part I- DISCUSSION
1. Rainfall data are the fundamental building block for determining the amount of runoff
generated during a particular storm event. if in the design of a beam, the structural
designer must know the loads that the beam will be required to support, what is to be
determined by the hydrologist in designing a storm sewer system or highway culvert?
4. For the design engineer, the most important characteristic of rainfall are: the depth or
volume of rainfall during a specified time interval; the duration of the rainfall; the area
over which the rainfall occurs; the spatial and temporal distributions of rainfall within the
storm; and the average recurrence interval of a rainfall amount. Discuss briefly each
characteristic.
a. The unit of precipitation is linear depth, usually in millimetres (volume/area), or kg
m–2 (mass/area) for liquid precipitation. Rainfall intensity is defined as the ratio
of the total amount of rain (rainfall depth) falling during a given period to the
duration of the period It is expressed in depth units per unit time, usually as mm
per hour (mm/h).
b. The duration refers to the length of time rainfall occurs. A high intensity rainfall
for a short duration may affect tender seedlings, but it will not likely have much
effect on soil erosion and runoff. Rainfall of longer duration can significantly affect
infiltration, runoff, and soil erosion processes.
c. Extreme rainfall can result in flooding and the necessity to release water from
hydroelectric dams. Such events can be placed into a historical context using the
concept of Average Recurrence Interval (ARI). Also referred to as the “return
period”, the ARI represents a current precipitation event (amount per unit time)
as the average number of years (climatologically) between equivalent events for
a specific location.
The average or expected value of the periods between exceedances of a given
rainfall total accumulated over a given duration. It is implicit in this definition that
the periods between exceedances are generally random
5. In estimating effective rainfall or storm water runoff from a rainfall event, the following
water losses or abstractions must be determined accordingly: interception, infiltration
depression storage, and evapotranspiration. Discuss briefly each abstraction.
Part II – Problems
1. A study of daily rainfall in July showed that the probability of a rainy day following a rainy
day is 0.444, a dry day following a dry day is 0.724. If it is observed that a certain July
day is dry, what is the probability that the next two days will also be dry?
2. The computed relative frequencies of observed peak discharges in a river using class
interval of 15,000 cfs with 7 classes are 0.030,0.106