Design and Construction of a rectangular section channel-prototype, to determine the specific energy in the three types of regimens: Critical, subcritical and supercritical

Abstract

The problem of water scarcity is not a transient issue, but to solve it has been a long lasting endeavor for humanity. Many human societies have tried diverse solutions to solve this problem and one of them was to efficiently move water for the subsistence of all people. For this purpose, civil and agricultural engineers seek to find novel ways to conduct water as close as possible to where it is needed, e.g., cultivated fields and water supply reservoirs, or to build up infrastructure to greatly reduce the immense problem of floods generated by high intensity rains. The main goal of this paper is to determine the water specific energies occurring in critical, subcritical and supercritical flow regimes, by means of a prototype rectangular section channel operation. Application of Bernoulli´s equation for uniform flow conditions is the adopted methodology. As final conclusions we can state that development of new channel prototypes facilitates the experimentation of fluids, allowing to a great extent the stabilization of flow, thus, optimizing the measurement of different types of key water variables.