Bridge Momentum: Understanding the Weight Component

Take a look at the water surface profile in Figure 1 below. The two profiles are for Class A low flow (subcritical throughout) with identical boundary conditions, flow conditions, and geometry. The only difference is the bridge modeling approach: the blue line is calculated using the energy method; the red line is calculated using the […]

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Back to the Basics: Bank Station Placement – Part 2

Expanding upon Chris’ discussion of where to place bank stations, what should you do about high terrain somewhere in the middle of your cross section?  Here is an example: How should we treat the left overbank?  It’s hard to tell if the high area next the left bank is isolated (i.e., it would be an […]

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Careful with Flow Inconsistency on the Max WS Profile

I’m a big proponent of checking flow consistency in your results.  Anyone who has taken a RAS class from me has heard me go on about Standard Table 2 and the benefits of maintaining a consistent distribution of flow not only between sub sections (left overbank, main channel, right overbank) in a cross section, but […]

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