CE 383: Hydrology and Urban Water System HW 4

Spring 2012 Due Tuesday, February 21st in Mehrnoosh Behroozs mailbox by 4:00 pm. _____________________________________________________________________________________

1. Assume you are dealing with a vertical-walled reservoir having a surface area of 500,000 m2 and that an inflow of 1.0 m3/s occurs. How many hours will it take to raise the reservoir level by 30 cm? 2. The evaporation from the surface of a 3,650-acre lake is 100 acre-ft/day. Estimate the depth change in the lake in feet during a 1-year period if the net inflow to the lake is 25 cfs. Is the depth increasing or decreasing? What is the change in centimeters? 3. Find and delineate a small watershed (1-5 mi2). The outlet of the watershed should be a road crossing or other well defined point. With this assignment a delineated topographic map must be provided (Xerox or original) showing the watershed boundary. The figure title should indicate the original source for the base map and date it was prepared. To delineate the watershed you may use any assortment of technology available (planimeter checked out from the front office, or computer software). Part of the assignment is investigating tools available and how to use them. A brief discussion of the procedure used and the estimated watershed area must be included in the submission.
4. The first year you obtain your Professional Engineer seal, you design and observe

construction of 3 small dams, each of which is in a different area of the country. Each of these dams is designed to pass the 100-year storm without overtopping, since they are relatively small and no loss of life or damage to property is likely if they do fail. After that first year, you never design another dam for the rest of your career since you move into management. What is the probability that at least one of those 3 dams will be overtopped in your anticipated 35-year career?

5.

A culvert, whose expected life term is 25 years, has been designed to safely discharge the 25-year return period flood without overtopping the road. a. Compute the probability that the road will not be overtopped in the 25 year period. b. What is the probability of at least two floods overtopping the road in the 25-year period? c. At this location, the state Department of Transportation has determined the cost of flood damages, Y, ($) is directly related to the number of over-toppings, k, in its life term. This relationship is expressed as Y = 10,000k1.6. Determine the monies (expected/average cost) that should be budgeted by the state over the 25 year period to fund the cost of flood damage.

6. Collect the annual maximum peak data for the following station Haw River near Benaja, NC (USGS site no: 02093500). To obtain this data, go to the USGS webpage (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/sw) and click on peaks. Give the station number and Download the annual peak flow data. Plot the annual maximum peaks against water year and identify the date on which the maximum flood value at the site has occurred. Test whether there is any year to year correlation in the annual maximum peak data. You can assume the year to year correlation is insignificant if the absolute value of the computed correlation is less than 1.96 n0.5 where n denotes the number of years of flood peaks considered in computing the correlation. 7. Using the data collected in Problem 6 calculate the 100 year peak flood using normal and log-normal distributions. Compare the computed peak discharges using each method.