H22IS4 Water in the Environment Course work  2011 

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 27 April 2011

1. Current-meter measurements were taken at a section on a river as

shown in Table Q.1. Use the mean-section method to estimate the
discharge.
Table Q.1

(m)
Distance

(m)
Depth

(ms-1)
velocity
Mean
5 0 0

10 1.8 0.1

20 3.7 0.2

30 9.0 0.6

35 12.6 1.1

40 10.1 0.8

45 5.3 0.5

47 0 0

2. Analysis of data on maximum one-day rainfall depth at Chennai in India

indicated that a depth of 280 mm had a return period of 50 years.
Determine the probability of a one-day rainfall depth equal to or greater
than 280 mm at Chennai occurring,
(a) Once in 20 successive years
(b) at least once in 20 successive years

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 H22IS4 Water in the Environment Course work  2011 
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 27 April 2011

3. Discuss all factors affecting runoff of a catchment and their effects.

4. Given the ordinates of a 4-h unit hydrograph in Table Q.4, derive the
ordinates of a 12-h unit hydrograph for the same catchment.

Table Q.4

Time (h) 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44

Ordinate
of 4-h UH 0 20 80 130 150 130 90 52 27 15 5 0
(m3/s)

5. A 6-h unit hydrograph are given in Table Q.5. A storm had three
successive 6-h intervals of rainfall magnitude of 3.0, 5.0 and 4.0 cm
respectively. Assuming an infiltration of 0.2 cm/h and a base flow of 30
m3/s, determine and plot the resulting hydrograph of flow.

Table Q.5

Time
0 3 6 9 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60 66
(h)
6-h
UH 0 150 250 450 600 800 700 600 450 320 200 100 50 0
(m3/s)

6. What do you understand by the term flood hydrograph? Discuss the

components of a hydrograph.

7. Predict the 100-year and 200-year return period floods for the River
Elwy based on the annual peak flows (m3s-1) as shown in Table Q.8. Use
the Generalized Logistic probability distribution in your calculation. If you
use Excel, please produce a printout of the spreadsheet. Plot Growth
Factor against Logistic Reduced Variate for both observed and predicted
flows.

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 H22IS4 Water in the Environment Course work  2011 
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Table Q.7 Annual peak flows (m3s-1) at Pont Y Gwyddel station

8. Using the GL growth curve, estimate the 100 year return period flood
for the River Elwy at Pont-Y-Gwyddel, given that the L-moments are
70.66, 14.587, 3.271 and 2.921 and that QMED is 65.2 m3s-1.

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 H22IS4 Water in the Environment Course work  2011 
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 27 April 2011
9.

10. A 10.0 ml sample of sewage is mixed with sufficient distilled water to

fill a standard BOD test bottle. The initial DO is 9 mg/l. To ensure an
accurate test, it is desirable to have at least a 2 mg/l drop in DO during
the 5 days and that the final DO should be at least 2 mg/l. For what
range of BOD5 would this dilution provide the desired results?

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