FlumeSee how water flows in a channel
Flume is a desktop app for open channel flow: normal and critical depth, the hydraulic jump, and water surface profiles, worked out as you type, drawn as you go, and written up as a PDF report.
Uniform flow
Any section, any unknown
Describe the channel and solve Manning's equation for whichever value you don't have: discharge, normal depth, slope, roughness or bottom width.
- Rectangular, trapezoidal, triangular, circular and parabolic sections
- Surveyed sections, with a roughness for each part of the bed and banks
- Froude number, critical depth and slope, bed shear, and a rating curve
Energy and momentum
The hydraulic jump, on one screen
Enter one depth. Flume gives the depth on the other side of a jump, the energy it loses and the kind of jump it is, with the specific energy and specific force diagrams beside them.
- Alternate and sequent depths for every section shape
- Energy loss, efficiency and approximate length
- Works from either side of the jump
Gradually varied flow
Water surface profiles, classified
Start from a depth, a sluice gate or a weir. Flume follows the profile by the direct step method, names it (M1, S2, H3…), and draws the long section with the normal and critical depth lines.
- Mild, steep, critical, horizontal and adverse slopes
- Sharp- and broad-crested weirs, and sluice gates, as controls
- A PDF report of the whole analysis, plus CSV tables and PNG figures
Two controls
It finds the jump for you
Give a reach a gate at one end and a tailwater at the other. Flume follows both profiles and puts the hydraulic jump where their specific forces balance, or tells you it's drowned or swept out.
- Where the jump starts and ends, its depths and its energy loss
- Both candidate profiles shown, dotted, behind the result
- Raise the tailwater and watch the jump move
Built to teach
A guide and tutorials inside the app
Every analysis is explained in a guide that opens beside your work, with four tutorials to follow along and the methods behind each number. A question mark next to a heading explains just that part.
- Step-by-step tutorials with the results you should see
- SI and US customary units, converted when you switch
- Light and dark appearance
What it works out
One channel, three analyses. Change a number and everything follows.
Uniform flow
Normal depth, discharge, slope, roughness or width; area, wetted perimeter, hydraulic radius, top width; velocity and bed shear.
Critical flow
Critical depth and critical slope for every section, and whether the channel is mild or steep.
Specific energy
The energy diagram, the minimum energy and the alternate depth for any depth of flow.
Hydraulic jump
Sequent depth, energy loss, efficiency, kind and length, from the specific force.
Profiles
Twelve kinds of gradually varied profile by the direct step method, as a long section and a table.
Controls
Sluice gates and sharp- or broad-crested weirs as boundary conditions, and the jump between two controls.
Methods, stated plainly
Flume says what it assumes. The same list is in the app, under Help.
- Manning's equation, with k = 1 (SI) or 1.486 (US)
- An energy coefficient α you can set; momentum coefficient 1
- Compound sections by the divided channel method
- Profiles by the direct step method, in a prismatic channel
- Jumps from the balance of specific force and weight along the bed
- Gates free or submerged; weirs flowing free
The hydraulics are checked against hand calculations and Chow's Open-Channel Hydraulics examples each time the app is built.
