Hydraulic structures in rivers and waterways, such as dams and weirs provide important functions to society including flood mitigation, drinking and irrigation water supply and hydropower. The safety of the structure is paramount even under the most extreme conditions, while hydraulic structures should consider sustainability. Safety considerations for fish are often secondary in design and are often opposed to the most efficient hydraulic design. Fish can get injured by impeller blades of turbines, by rapid pressure changes at sluice gate or during transport along the spillway or in the downstream energy dissipator. Research at the UNSW Water Research Laboratory (WRL) is combining the expertise of hydraulic engineers and fish biologists to design hydraulic structures that operate efficiently without injuring fish. This research project will focus on fish transport along a spillway and the downstream hydraulic jump stilling basin to better understand the hydraulic stressors that cause fish injuries, and which hydraulic conditions can be considered safe for fish.
School
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Area
Hydraulic engineering | Ecohydraulics | Fluid mechanics | Water resources engineering | Environmental engineering
- Research environment
- Expected outcomes
- Supervisory team
- Reference material/links
This research project will take place at the UNSW Water Research Laboratory (WRL) in Manly Vale. WRL is a vibrant part of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and home to the largest and most comprehensive hydraulics laboratories in Australia. WRL is a specialist fundamental and applied research organisation, focusing on issues related to water. For more than 60 years WRL has tackled complex challenges in areas of coastal, environmental and eco-engineering, hydrology, water resources, hydraulics and groundwater.
The experiments of this TOR project will be conducted in a large open channel flume at WRL and will combine the use of state-of-the-art instrumentation with visual observations of fish during transport through spillways and hydraulic jumps. The research is part of the cross-disciplinary Tube Fishway research that includes a dedicated fish keeping and research space at WRL as well as four PhD students, providing a critical mass of research personnel and a friendly research environment. The project will be led by A/Prof Stefan Felder, who will be responsible for the engineering aspects of the project, while Dr Jasmin Martino will bring fish biology expertise to the project.
This project aims to achieve the following outcomes:
- Better understanding of fish transport in high-speed flows and hydraulic jumps.
- Identify hydrodynamic thresholds to prevent fish injury.
- Guidelines for safe fish transport in spillways and energy dissipators.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/research/wrl/our-research/tube-fishway-project
Relevant publications:
- Cox RX; Kingsford RT; Suthers I; Felder S, 2023, 'Fish Injury from Movements across Hydraulic Structures: A Review', Water (Switzerland), 15, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/w15101888
- Felder S; Erpicum, S.; Sean M; Daniel V; David Z; Crookston, B., 2021, Hydraulic structures at a crossroads towards the Sustainable Development Goals, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research, https://www.iahr.org/library/infor?pid=20505
- Li R; Splinter KD; Felder S, 2021, 'LIDAR scanning as an advanced technology in physical hydraulic modelling: The stilling basin example', Remote Sensing, 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13183599