Experimental Study of Runoff Coefficients for Different Hill Slope Soil Profiles

Abstract

The estimation of peak discharge from a catchment due to intense rainfall is a difficult task that may occur in a return period. If cannot be estimated accurately, it may lead to serious problem in hydraulic structure design like bridge, culvert across a river and drainage system. The main parameter which affects the peak flow is runoff coefficient of the catchment which directly depends on the soil type, its slope and land use pattern with vegetation covers. For the purpose, this study was carried out to estimate maximum runoff coefficients for different land profiles and soil types in hill slope model developed in 10 degree with the horizontal to the rainfall simulator rig (Basic Hydrology system-S12) experimentally which can give more reliable value than the real field test method as it is easier than field test especially in hill slope. The soil slope preparation was made of sand, silt and clay separately and the experiments were carried out in a controlled system. The slope prepared represented a small catchment on a plot of 2.02 meter length, 1 meter wide and 0.15 m depth soil plots (at the slope of 10° to the horizontal plane). From the experiment in different soil plots, the rainfall runoff coefficients were observed as 0.428 - 0.53 for sand soil slope, 0.46 - 0.55 for silt soil slope and 0.42 - 0.51 for clay soil slope under uniform rainfall rate of 4 lpm to 13 lpm in each soil slope. Rainfall runoff correlation equation was found with the values of R above 90% in each soil slope. The value observed is within the range of rational value of 0.05 to 0.95 as standard which concluded that the performance of simulator was found good to deal with rational values. And the runoff coefficients for these soil types can be taken within the range obtained to estimate peak discharge in any small catchment area depending on the soil types.