What is hydraulics?

Fire has been said to be a good servant, but a bad master.  The same can be said of water. Floods
and droughts are periods of human misery, marked by losses of life, property and opportunity.
Those countries which have yet to control their waters are typified by endemic diseases, a lack of
development and a limited life expectancy.
The basic aim of hydraulics is to understand, and control for the benefit of society, the
occurrence, movement and use of water, whether it is in lakes, rivers, pipes, drains, percolating
through soils or pounding the coastline as destructive waves.  To modify the behaviour of water
calls inevitably for a large investment of time, resources and effort. Thus hydraulic engineering
has only appeared once a society is centralised under an organised government.
Hydraulics is often confused with the allied science of fluid mechanics.  Good reason for this
exists, since a considerable overlap occurs between the two studies.  However, fluid mechanics
deals with gases, as well as the common liquids, and to most civil engineers a study of gas
behaviour is irrelevant to their professional needs.
Thus the modern definition of hydraulics limits the subject to the study of water and those other
liquids which a civil engineer is called upon to store, convey or pump.
Why do we study hydraulics?
All organised societies need adequate water supplies, drainage to dispose of waste or excess
water, as well as the protection from uncontrolled water.  Thus an obvious necessity for a study
of hydraulics exists.
However, this self-evident need does tend to persuade many students that hydraulics is separate
from, and often more difficult than, the other major civil engineering studies such as:-
·        structural mechanics,
·        structural design and
·        soil mechanics. 
This is an unfortunate belief, and can lead to the attitude that hydraulics is irrelevant to (for
example) structural projects.  Yet there are outstandingly successful Roman projects (some of
which still function after 1700 years) which have survived because their designers knew that, if
water could penetrate into the structures, failure would be inevitable in a few years.
As your studies progress in this area of study, you will become aware of the interaction of
hydraulic factors with other civil engineering studies.  Thus it is important that you realise that
hydraulic problems do not occur in isolation and that in professional life it will be essential to
integrate hydraulics with other academic subjects.
The development of hydraulics
Hydraulic engineering has been practised for as long ago as written history.
The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Chinese constructed canals, dams and devices for lifting
water.  Whilst some of these works were very successful, others are known to have failed.  The
lack of any comprehensive theory of hydraulics made many of their major hydraulic projects
something of a gamble.
By the time Greek civilisation had become established (between 500 and 100 BC) enough
information had been collected to divide Hydraulics into Hydrostatics (the study of motionless or
static water) and Hydrodynamics (the science of moving water).  In Hydrostatics, the only force
acting is the weight of the body of liquid, and with such a simple situation, the Greeks were able
to establish almost every rule and application.  The effect of this was the production of a variety
of machines operated by water.
Hydrodynamics, however, is made complicated by other forces, and even today it is recognised
as a more complex subject to study.  The Greeks, biased as they were against experimentation,
were unable to understand its complexity.
The Roman Empire followed the Greek civilisation and was obviously marked by a vast upsurge
in hydraulic engineering.  The empire covered much of Europe, Asia and northern Africa, and
was studded with public water supply schemes, drainage works and bridges, many of which still
stand today.  There is no doubt that the Romans were competent appliers of hydraulics but,
despite this, there is evidence that they lacked any deep understanding of the science.  A good
example of this is their method of charging for private water supplies to the wealthier citizens. 
Their approach was to believe that the flow rate delivered depended only on the diameter of the
pipe used for the supply and thus the water charges were based on the pipe size.   Today we
appreciate that a flow rate is expressed in units such as cubic metres per second (m3/s) and that it
is affected not only by the area open to flow (square metres: m2) but also by the velocity of flow,
in metres per second (m/s).
Without a real understanding of what flow actually was, it is not surprising that the Romans
contributed little to our understanding of hydrodynamics.  The amazing thing is, that their works
proved as successful as they did.
Until the sixteenth century, little real progress occurred.  Then with the Renaissance, it became,
for the first time, common for intelligent men to improve their understanding by conducting
experiments with real liquid flows. 
This growth of experimental knowledge, combined some 200 years later with a renewed interest
in mathematical analysis by such workers as Newton, Pascal and Descartes, led to the start of a
well established hydrodynamic theory that we use today.
Since then, hydraulics has developed and has become a more exact science. Perhaps the major
cause of this was the Industrial Revolution with its vast demand for water supplies, drainage and
water-powered machines.  The businessmen who controlled the new industrialisation demanded
that civil engineers should supply exactly the water or drainage or power that was required, and
so forced the development of more precise design methods.
Today, hydraulic engineering has reached the stage of confidence that makes it possible to re-
channel major rivers, to develop hydroelectric power adequate to supply a small country's needs
and to build ports and breakwaters on coasts where it was formerly impossible to dock more than
a small canoe.
The difficulties a student encounters
Hydraulics is still divided into the two categories the Greeks recognised, hydrostatics
and hydrodynamics.
Hydrostatics is always the first part studied and usually occupies less than one quarter of the total
study time.  This is because it deals only with a single type of force due to the weight of the
liquid in the tank or behind the dam wall.  It resembles closely the study of solid body mechanics
and utilises much the same methods.  For example, it is often necessary in the hydrostatic design
of (say) a lock gate to take the moments of the various liquid/fluid forces about a point, just as
one would do for loads on a beam in structural mechanics.  Thus any student having difficulties
with hydrostatic problems would be well advised to revise the basics of applied mechanics.
Hydrodynamics is the largest and certainly the most interesting part of hydraulics.  It does,
however, create real problems for some students, who do not recognise that the laboratory
experiments are as necessary to an overall understanding as is the published theory.
Hydrodynamics is a complex subject, and everyday life offers very little opportunity to become
familiar with some of its important effects.  For example, the boundary layers, total energy and
hydraulic grade lines in pipe flow, the variable depths of flow that can occur in open channels
and the remarkably high, yet short-lived, pressures that occur when a valve on a pipeline is closed
rapidly, are all difficult to understand unless one can visualise them. 
Laboratory experiments (Photographs) and demonstrations are the only possible chance for this. 
Thus laboratory periods are at least as important as theoretical classes and should always be taken
as the opportunity to understand what is happening in the fluid system.
The other problem that students commonly encounter with hydrodynamics is that of integrating
the various sub-topics that are covered, such as the Continuity Equation with the Bernoulli
Equation.
The only reason for studying hydraulics is surely to be able to apply the subject matter to real life
problems and that requires, above all else, an overall grasp of the material.  Details of the specific
formula for (say) the flow rate over a particular type of weir can always be found in any standard
text book.  What no book can give you is a personal integration of the subject which will allow
you to identify what analytical or design technique is necessary in a particular part of a hydraulic
problem.
If these two common mistakes are avoided, and if it is always realised that hydraulics is an
integral part of civil engineering, the subject can usually be studied with, at least, a fair degree of
enjoyment and certainly with a sense of personal achievement.
The ability to control water for the advantage of the community has historically been highly
prized and even today this is still the case.
The relative imprecision of  hydrodynamics
Hydrostatics, is an exact science.
In contrast, hydrodynamic problems can be analysed only to an approximate accuracy, and the
examples given to you in your studies will, to some degree, be of situations simplified from
reality. This will be most apparent in the treatment of open channel flow where the bias will be to
man-made channels of regular geometric cross-sections, such as rectangular or trapezoidal.
Natural river channels, whose cross-sectional areas and bed roughnesses vary significantly from
place to place on the river, are simply too complex for the theory that is available.  The reason for
this relative imprecision is that additional forces appear in fluid motion and these prevent an
engineer having the same detailed knowledge as they have in hydrostatic problems.  As a result,
the theory available in hydrodynamics often has to be supplemented by experimental evidence
and the introduction of coefficients of discharge and friction factors.  This point will no doubt be
stressed by your tutor and other texts which you should read.
Despite this difficulty of analysing detail, it should not be believed that major engineering works
cannot be safely and precisely designed.  The available theory applied with sound judgement and
commonsense is adequate, and many practising engineers prefer hydrodynamic to hydrostatic
design, simply because it does offer the opportunity for personalised judgement.
The reason, above all others, for the difficulty in obtaining precise details of a hydrodynamic
problem is the existence of a property called viscosity which is possessed by all fluids to some
extent.
Viscosity is the ability of a fluid to stick to solid surfaces (the walls of a pipe, the bed of a
channel, the edges of a bridge pier, the outer skin of a car or aircraft etc.) and to exert a drag on
them, which in turn has to be overcome by the using up of some of the energy in the fluid or
some of the energy in forcing a body through a fluid.
Very viscous liquids, such as tars, oils, glues, paints and treacle, are thick, slow-flowing fluids
which cling to any solid surface.  Anyone who has stirred a tin of paint will realise how difficult
it is to make the paint run completely off the stirring rod.  As a matter of interest, the most
viscous fluid known to man is glass.  In other words, glass is not a solid but a very viscous fluid.
Other fluids, such as air and water, appear not to show this effect, but even these low-viscosity
fluids exert a drag on solid boundaries.  If this were not so, then balloons and boats would remain
stationary in a wind or in a moving river, without the need for anchors.
The practical effect of viscosity, which of course does not occur in hydrostatic problems where
no relative movement between the fluid and its container takes place, is that the elements of the
fluid closest to the solid boundaries are slowed down by viscous drag on the boundaries.  This
produces the situation where fluid particles at increasing distance away from the boundaries
move at greater and greater velocities.  The zone of near stationary fluid against the solid surface
is termed the boundary layer and can vary from a few millimetres to several metres in thickness,
depending on the fluid's viscosity and the roughness of the solid surface.
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Hydrodynamics
Whenever a fluid flows in a curved path, there must be a force acting radially inwards on the fluid to
provide the inward acceleration, known as centripetal acceleration . 

This results in an increase in pressure near the outer wall of the bend, starting at some point A  (Fig. 37.2)
and rising to a maximum at some point B  . There is also a reduction of pressure near the inner wall giving
a minimum pressure at C  and a subsequent rise from C to D  . Therefore between A  and B  and between
C and D the fluid experiences an adverse pressure gradient (the pressure increases in the direction of
flow). 

Fluid particles in this region, because of their close proximity to the wall, have low velocities and cannot
overcome the adverse pressure gradient and this leads to a separation of flow from the boundary and
consequent losses of energy in generating local eddies. Losses also take place due to a secondary
flow in the radial plane of the pipe because of a change in pressure in the radial depth of the pipe. 

This flow, in conjunction with the main flow, produces a typical spiral motion of the fluid which persists
even for a downstream distance of fifty times the pipe diameter from the central plane of the bend. This
spiral motion of the fluid increases the local flow velocity and the velocity gradient at the pipe wall, and
therefore results in a greater frictional loss of head than that which occurs for the same rate of flow in a
straight pipe of the same length and diameter. 

The additional loss of head (apart from that due to usual friction) in flow through pipe bends is known

as bend loss and is usually expressed as a fraction of the velocity head as   , where V is the
average velocity of flow through the pipe. The value of K  depends on the total length of the bend and the
ratio of radius of curvature of the bend and pipe diameter R/D. The radius of curvature R  is usually taken
as the radius of curvature of the centre line of the bend. The factor K  varies slightly with Reynolds number
Re in the typical range of Re encountered in practice, but increases with surface roughness.

 
Single-Phase Flow
The main feature of flow through a bend is the presence of a radial pressure gradient created by
the centrifugal force acting on the fluid. Because of this, the fluid at the center of the pipe moves
towards the outer side and comes back along the wall towards the inner side. This creates a
double spiral flow field shown schematically in Figure 1. If the bend curvature is strong enough,
the adverse pressure gradient near the outer wall in the bend and near the inner wall just after the
bend may lead to flow separation at these points, giving rise to a large increase in pressure losses.
Even for fairly large-radius bends, the flow field in the bend will be severely distorted as
illustrated by the data of Rowe (1970) shown in Figure 2.
The pressure losses suffered in a bend are caused by both friction and momentum exchanges
resulting from a change in the direction of flow. Both these factors depend on the bend angle, the
curvature ratio and the Reynolds Number. The overall pressure drop can be expressed as the
sum of two components: 1) that resulting from friction in a straight pipe of equivalent length
which depends mainly on the Reynolds number (and the pipe roughness); and 2) that resulting
from losses due to change of direction, normally expressed in terms of a bend-loss coefficient,
which depends mainly on the curvature ratio and the bend angle. The pressure loss in a bend can
thus be calculated as:
(1)