Fluid Section Types: Open Channels

A network element is characterized by a type of fluid section. It has to be specified on the *FLUID SECTION card unless the analysis is a pure thermomechanical calculation (no calculation of pressure, mass flow or fluid depth). For an open channel network the boundary conditions for each branch are located upstream (frontwater flow) or downstream (backwater flow). These boundary conditions are made up of special elements, such as a sluice gate or a weir. Nearly all of these elements actually consist of pairs of elements, which reference each other. For instance, adjacent and downstream of the sluice gate element a sluice opening element has to be defined. The upstream element of such a pair has an additional degree of freedom attached to its middle node to accommodate the location of any hydraulic jump which might occur in the downstream channel branch. Therefore, all elements downstream of a pair of such boundary elements have to reference the upstream element of the pair. In our example, this is the sluice gate element. The friction in all elements is modeled by the White-Colebrook law, unless the parameter MANNING is specified on the *FLUID SECTION card. For details on these laws the reader is referred to Section 6.9.18.