GOLLIS UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
Departments of CIVIL ENGINEERING

Engineering Hydrology
Semester 6
COURSE OUTLINE

Chapter One: Introduction to Hydrology

Chapter Two: Precipitation
Chapter Three: Water losses
Chapter Four: Runoff
Chapter Five: Ground water hydrology
Chapter six: Hydrological statistics
Chapter 1 :
Introduction to Hydrology
1.1 INTRODUCTION

Hydrology means the science of water.

It is the science that deals with the occurrence,
circulation and distribution of water of the
earth and earth’s atmosphere.
As a branch of earth science, it is concerned with
the water in streams and lakes, rainfall and
snow-fall, snow and ice on the land and water
occurring below the earth’s surface in the pores
of the soil and rocks.
In a general sense engineering hydrology deals with
 Estimation of water resources,

 The study of processes such as precipitation,

runoff, evapotranspiration and their interaction
 The study of problems such as floods and
droughts, and strategies to combat them
1.2 HYDROLOGIC CYCLE
Water occurs on the earth in all its three states, and
in various degrees of motion.
 Evaporation of water from water bodies such as
oceans and lakes, formation and movement of
clouds, rain and snowfall, stream flow and
groundwater movement are some examples of the
dynamic aspects of water.
 rain, snow, hail, sleet, etc are part of the
precipitation
Each path of the hydrologic cycle involves one
or more of the following aspects:
(i) Transportation of water,
(ii) Temporary storage and
(iii) Change of state.
For example,
(a) The process of rainfall has the change of
state and transportation and
(b) The groundwater path has storage and
transportation aspects.
 THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE HYDROLOGIC
CYCLE CAN BE BROADLY CLASSIFIED AS
TRANSPORTATION ( FLOW) COMPONENTS AND
STORAGE COMPONENTS AS BELOW:

TRANSPORTATION COMPONENTS STORAGE COMPONENTS

 Precipitation  Storage on the land

 Evaporation surface (Depression
 Transpiration storage, Ponds, Lakes,
 Infiltration Reservoirs, etc)
 Runoff  Soil moisture storage
 Ground water storage
Engineering applications of the knowledge of the
hydrologic cycle, and hence of the subjects of
hydrology, are found in the design and operation of
projects dealing with
 water sup-ply,
 irrigation and
 drainage,
 water power,
 flood control,
 Recreational uses of water.
1.3 KEY HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES

 Precipitation: Condensed water vapor that falls to

the earth surface. Most precipitation occurs as rain,
but also includes snow, hail, fog drip, sleet, etc
 Runoff: The variety of ways by which water moves
across the land. This includes both surface runoff and
channel runoff.
 Infiltration: The flow of water from the ground
surface into the ground. Once infiltrated, the water
becomes soil moisture or groundwater.
 Subsurface Flow: The flow of water
underground, in the vadose zone and aquifers.
 Evaporation and transpiration: The
transformation of water from liquid to gas
phases as it moves from the ground or bodies of
water into the overlying atmosphere.
Evaporation often implicitly includes transpiration
from plants, though together they are specifically
referred to as evapotranspiration.
1.4 COMMON UNITS

Flow rate in stream and rivers are usually recorded as

cubic meters per second (m3/s, i.e., cumecs) or cubic
feet per second (cfs).
Volumes are often measured as cubic meters, gallons,
and liters.
Precipitations are commonly recorded in inches or
millimeters.
Rainfall rates are usually represented in inches or
centimeters per hour.
Evaporation, transpiration and infiltration rate are
measured as inches or millimeters per day or longer
time periods.
Some common conversions:
1 inch = 0.254 meter = 25.4 mm
1 foot = 0.3048 meter
1 gallon = 0.003785 m3
1 m3 = 1000 liters
1 mile = 1.609 km
 1.5 WATER DISTRIBUTION AND WATER BALANCE

The total quantity of water in the world is estimated to

be about 1386 million cubic kilometres (M km3).
About 96.5% of this water is contained in the oceans
as saline water.
Some of the water on the land amounting to about 1%
of the total water is also saline. Thus only about 35.0
M km3 of fresh water is available.
Out of this about 10.6 M km3 is both liquid and fresh
and The remaining 24.4 M km3 is contained in
frozen state as ice in the polar regions and on
mountain tops and glaciers.
The residence time is the average duration for a
water molecule to pass through a water body.
It can be derived by dividing the volume of water
by the flow rate. Some estimated residence time
values are listed in Table 3
WATER BALANCE

 The total amount of water available to the earth is

finite and conserved. Although the total volume
of water in the global hydrologic cycle remains
constant, the distribution of this water is
continually changing on continents, in regions
and local catchments.
TABLE 3 GLOBAL ANNUAL WATER BALANCE
From the conservation of mass, water balance for any
storage can be expressed as

 Where QI,– input flow rate, and Qo output flow rate;

S- storage
 For a discrete system with a time duration Δt, Eq(1) can
be expressed as

 Where VI and Vo are input volume and output volume;

ΔS is storage change.
1.6 CATCHMENT
A catchment (also called drainage basin, river basin, watershed)
is an extent of land where water from rain or snow melt drains
downhill into a body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir,
estuary, wetland, sea or ocean.

 Size Slope Shape Soil type Storage capacity

 In hydrology, catchment is a logical unit of focus
for studying the movement of water within the
hydrological cycle, because the majority of water
that discharges from the catchment outlet
originated as precipitation falling on the
catchment.
 The water balance equation for a catchment.
Mass inflow - mass outflow = change in mass storage
 Also written as P -R -G –E-T = ∆S
  In hydrologic calculations, the volumes are often
expressed as average depths over the catchment area.
Thus, for example, if the annual stream flow from a 10
km2
catchment is 107m3 it corresponds to a depth of

-
The storage S consists of three components as
S= Ss+ Ssm+ Sg
where
Ss= surface water storage
Ssm= water in storage as soil moisture and
Sg=water in storage as groundwater.
Thus in ΔS = ΔSs + ΔSsm + ΔSg
 In terms of rainfall–runoff relationship, can be
represented as
R=P–L
 where L = Losses = water not available to runoff
due to infiltration (causing addition to soil
moisture and groundwater storage), evaporation,
transpiration and surface storage.
1.7 APPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING

 Hydrology finds its greatest application in the

design and operation of water-resources
engineering projects,
(i) irrigation,

(ii) water supply,

(iii) flood control,

(iv) water power

 In all these projects hydrological investigations for
the proper assessment of the following factors are
necessary:
 The capacity of storage structures such as
reservoirs.
 The magnitude of flood flows to enable safe
disposal of the excess flow
 The minimum flow and quantity of flow available at
various seasons.
 The interaction of the flood wave and hydraulic
structures, such as, reservoirs, barrages and
bridges.
Many important projects in the past have failed due
to improper assessment of the hydrological factors.
Some typical failures of hydraulic structures are:
 i) overtopping and consequent failure of an earthen
dam due to an inadequate spill-way capacity,
 (ii) failure of bridges and culverts due to excess
flood flow and
 (iii) inability of a large reservoir to fill up with
water due to overestimation of the stream flow.
Such failure, often called hydrologic failures
1.8 SOURCES OF DATA
 The data normally required in the studies are
I. Weather records(Meteorological Data) temperature,
humidity and wind velocity
II. Precipitation data
III. Stream flow records
IV. Evaporation and evapotranspiration data
V. Infiltration characteristics of the study area
VI. Soils of the area
VII. Land use and land cover
VIII. Groundwater characteristics
IX. Physical and geological characteristics of the area
X. Water quality data
1.7 PRACTICE

Practice 1
The volume of atmospheric water is 12,900 km3
The evapotranspiration from land is
72,000km3/year and that from ocean is
505,000km3/year. Estimate the residence time of
water molecules in the atmosphere (in days).
SOLUTION

The residence time can be derived by dividing the

volume of water by the flow rate Total flow rate
= 505000+72000=577000 km3/s
The residence time = 12900/577000 = 0.0224
year = 8.2 days
 Practice 2
A reservoir has the following inflows and outflows
(in cubic meters) for the first three months of the
year. If the storage at the beginning of January is
60m3, determine the storage at the end of March.
Solution
The storage change is
 Practice 3
A lake had a water surface elevation of 103.200 m
above datum at the beginning of a certain month. In
that month the lake received an average inflow of 6.0
m3/s from surface runoff sources. In the same period
the outflow from the lake had an average value of
6.5 m3/s. Further, in that month, the lake received a
rainfall of 145 mm and the evaporation from the lake
surface was estimated as 6.10 cm. Write the water
budget equation for the lake and calculate the water
surface elevation of the lake at the end of the month.
The average lake surface area can be taken as 5000
ha. Assume that there is no contribution to or from
the groundwater storage.
SOLUTION
In a time interval Δt the water budget for the lake can be written
as Input volume – output volume = change in storage of the
lake
I Δt + PA) – (Q Δt + EA) =ΔS
where I = average rate of inflow of water into the
lake, Q = average rate of outflow from the lake, P
= precipitation, E = evaporation, A = average
surface area of the lake and ΔS = change in
storage volume of the lake.
 Here t = 1 month = 30 x 24 x60 x60 = 2.592 x106 s =
2.592 Ms In one month:
Inflow volume = IΔt = 6.0x 2.592 = 15.552 M m3
Outflow volume = QΔt = 6.5 x2.592 = 16.848 M m3
Input due to precipitation = PA= 0.145x500x100x100 =
7.25Mm3
Outflow due to evaporation = EA = 0.061x5000x100x100
= 3.05 M m3
 Practice 4
 A small catchment of area 150 ha received a
rainfall of 10.5 cm in 90 minutes due to a storm.
At the outlet of the catchment, the stream
draining the catchment was dry before the storm
and experienced a runoff lasting for 10 hours with
an average discharge of 1.5 m3/s. The stream was
again dry after the runoff event. (a) What is the
amount of water which was not available to
runoff due to combined effect of infiltration,
evaporation and transpiration? What is the ratio
of runoff to precipitation?
 SOLUTION: The water budget equation for the catchment in a
time Δ t is
R=P–L
where L = Losses = water not available to runoff due to infiltration
(causing addition to soil moisture and groundwater storage),
evaporation, transpiration and surface storage. In the present case
Δt = duration of the runoff = 10 hours.
Note that the rainfall occurred in the first 90 minutes and the rest 8.5
hours the precipitation was zero.