The main purpose of this book is to contribute towards an understanding of the specifics of river diversion and to stimulate creativity, when tackling new projects. Many years of activity in hydraulic engineering has taught that the implementation of man-made constructions in natural river valleys should be approached with precision and constraint. Each river diversion project has its own individual character. The diversion structures, and only these, interfere with the changing river: its flow and floods, sediment load and floating debris. A successful design must, therefore, be based on detailed knowledge of the river hydrology. A recent trend in this field is to consider the given river as a system, and to define a conceptual model which embraces the relevant components and their links. Like most major civil engineering undertakings, a river diversion demands extreme precision. Many disciplines are involved: hydrology and hydraulics, soil and structure mechanics, concrete technology, mechanical and electrical engineering. This book pays particular attention to hydraulic design, involving aspects such as layout, structure shape and dimensions, and environmental effects.

Rapid growth in water requirements makes it necessary to increase the amount of water drawn from rivers. The dams necessary for capturing river water have to be built to resist damage when large floods occur, and an idea of the possible destructive power of floods is given by the front photograph. The need for protection results in thick sill structures fitted with gates, and ""upstream"" and ""downstream"" cut-off walls. Sediment transported by rivers settles forming deposits behind dams, where flow velocities decrease. On the other hand, where flow velocities are high through hydraulic machinery (pums and turbines) fed from the dam, it can be necessary to remove even fine sand from the water, and also to remove floating debris. Various hydro-mechanical installations (including gates and screens) are introduced into the flow circuits to deal with sediment and debris problems.Many emperical solutions to definition of very important details complement standard design procedures. Understanding of their use is facilitated by numerous illustrations.