Storm Hydrograph / Flood Hydrograph / Hydrograph - single peaked skew distribution of Basin lag (lag time) – most important

me) – most important characteristic of a basin affecting hydrograph sue to a

Hydrograph – response of given catchment to a rainfall input Dimensionless unit hydrographs - recommended by various agencies to facilitate construction
of synthetic unit hydrographs
Three phases of Runoff- Viz. surface run-off, interflow & base flow
Short-term plan - quick method for estimating design flood peak has been developed
FACTORS AFFECTING HYDROGRAPH
Long-term plan - separate regional methodology has been developed by CWC
Physiographic factors
Divided into 26 hydro meteorologically homogeneous subzones (India)
a. Basin Characteristics – size, shape, slope, nature of valley, drainage density
b. Infiltration characteristics – land use and cover, soil type and geological Instantaneous unit hydrograph – limiting case of a unit hydrograph of zero duration
conditions, lakes, swamps and other storage
c. Channel characteristics – cross-section, roughness, storage capacity Convolution integral / Duhamel integral

Climatic factors

a. Storm characteristics – precipitation, intensity, duration, magnitude, movement of Flood - nusually high stage in a river, the level at which the river overflows its banks and
storm’ inundates the adjoining area
b. Initial loss
c. Evapotranspiration Hydrologic design – hydrograph of extreme floods and stages corresponding to flood peaks
provide valuable data for it
Shape of the basin - influences the time taken for the water from the remote parts of the
catchment to arrive at the outlet Flood peak - most important and widely used parameter in flood hydrograph

Fan-shaped - give high peak and narrow hydrographs Rational formula – only applicable for small-size catchment (<50km²)

Elongated catchments – give broad and low-peaked hydrographs Unit-hydrograph method – normally restricted to moderate-size catchments with areas less
than 5000 km²
Small catchment - overland flow phased is predominant over the channel flow
Coefficient C - represents the integrated effect of the catchment losses and hence depends
Peak flood - land use and intensity of rainfall have important role on it. upon the nature of the surface, surface slope and rainfall intensity

Time base - of the hydrograph from larger basins will be larger than those of corresponding Empirical formulae - used for the estimation of flood peak are essentially regional formulae
hydrograph of smaller basins based on statistical correlation of the observed peak and important catchment properties.

Slope of the main stream - Controls the velocity of flow in the channel Kanwarsain and karpov 1967- have presented enveloping curves representing the relationship
between the peak flood flow and catchment area
Basin slope - is important in small catchments where the overland flow is relatively more important
Unit hydrograph technique – can be used to predict the peak-flood hydrograph if the rainfall
Drainage density - ratio of the total channel length to the total drainage area producing the flood, infiltration characteristics of the catchment and the appropriate unit
hydrograph are available
Vegetation and forests - increase the infiltration and the storage capacities of soil
Extreme rainfall situations – used to obtain the design storm viscosity, the hydrograph of rainfall
Vegetal cover - reduces the peak flow (area less than 150 km² excess causing extreme floods

Duration of storm - of given intensity also has a direct proportional effect on the volume of runoff Hydrologic process – such as floods are exceedingly complex natural events

Peaked hydrograph - quicker concentration of flow at the basin outlet Annual series – values for the annual maximum flood from the given catchment area for large
number of successive years constitute a hydrologic data series
COMPONENTS OF HYDROGRAPH
Chow 1951 – shown that most frequency distribution functions applicable in hydrologic studies
a. Rising limb/concentration curve – increase in storage due to gradual building up of can be express by the eq. known as general equation of hydrologic frequency analysis
storage and channels and over the catchment surface (basin and storm
characteristics control its shape) Commonly used frequency distribution functions for the predication of extreme flood values
b. Crest segment – one of the most important parts n hydrographs as it contains peak are:
flow
c. Recession limb – represents the withdrawal of water from the storage built up in the a. Gumbel’s extreme-value distribution
basin (Barnes 1940) b. Log-Pearson type III distribution
c. Log normal distribution
Peak flow - occurs when runoff from various parts of the catchment simultaneously contribute
amounts to achieve the maximum amount of flow at the basin outlet Gumbel 1941- introduced the extreme value distribution (known as Gumbel’s distribution)
Multiple-peaked complex hydrograph - when two or more storms occur in succession
Gumbel’s distribution – one of the most widely used probability distribution functions for
STORAGE OF WATER IN BASIN EXISTS AS extreme values in hydrologic and meteorologic studies for prediction of flood peaks, maximum
a. Surface storage – surface detention and channel storage rainfalls, maximum wind speed, etc.
b. Interflow storage
c. Groundwater storage – base- flow storage Mean annual flood – flood with T = 2.33 years

Estimate of the confidence limits – desirable because Gumbel’s method can have errors due
Surface-flow hydrograph - obtained from the total storm hydrograph by separating the quick- to limited sample data used.
response flow from the slow response runoff
Log normal distribution – when the skew is zero, the log pearson type distribution reduces to it
Direct runoff hydrograph - surface runoff hydrograph obtained after the base-flow separation
In annual hydrologic data series of floods, only one maximum value of flood per year is
Effective rainfall (excess rainfall) - part of the rainfall that becomes direct runoff at the outlet of selected as the data point
the watershed
Partial-duration series – a flood magnitude larger than an arbitrary selected base value
Hyetograph of the rainfall - pruned by deducting the losses
Regional analysis – adopted when the available data at a catchment is too short to conduct
Effective Rainfall Hyetograph (excess rainfall hyetograph) – initial loss and infiltration losses frequency analysis

Unit-hydrograph method (Sherman 1932) - most popular method in predicting the flood Flood frequency studies – most reliable in climates that are uniform from year to year
hydrograph
Small structures (culverts, storm drainages) – can be designed for less severe floods
Unit hydrograph - hydrograph of direct runoff resulting from one unit depth (1cm) of rainfall
excess occurring uniformly over the basin and at a uniform rate for a specified duration Design flood – flood adopted for the design of the structure

Time-invariant - direct runoff response to a given effective rainfall in a catchment Spillway design flood – design flood used for the specific purpose of designing the spillway of a
storage structure
Direct-runoff response - to the rainfall excess is assumed to be linear
Standard project flood (SPF) – flood that would result from a severe combination of
Unit hydrograph – calculation f flood hydrographs through digital computers meteorological and hydrological factors

TWO METHODS IN UNIT HYDROGRAPHS Probable maximum flood (PMF) – the extreme flood that is physically possible in a region as a
result of severe most combinations.
a. Method of superposition
b. The S-curve (S-hydrograph) – hydrograph produce by a continuous effective - Used in situations where the failure of the structure would result in the loss of life and
rainfall at a constant rate for an infinite period catastrophic damage (SPF is about 40-60% of PMF)

Oscillation of S-curve – errors in interpolation of unit hydrograph Hydraulic head – defined as the difference between the maximum water level on the
upstream and normal annual average flood level on the downstream
Unit hydrograph – assumes uniform distribution rainfall over the catchment (lower limit of 200
ha) Intermediate size dam – dam with gross storage of 5 mm³ and hydraulic head of 15 m

Distribution graph (Bernard 1935) – variation of the unit hydrograph Design storm – to estimate the design flood for a project by the use of unit hydrograph

Synthetic unit hydrographs - unit hydrographs derived from empirical eq. which relate the
salient hydrograph

Snyder 1938 – developed empirical equations for synthetic unit hydrographs

Snyder’s synthetic-unit hydrograph – with some modifications