Review of The hydraulics of stepped chutes and spillways by Hubert Chanson

Abstract

‘‘Some may think another book on stepped spillways,’’ while others will welcome this new book of Hubert Chanson as a valuable addition to hydraulic engineering. Chanson worked for more than a decade on free surface air-water flows; first on air entrainment of chute flow, then mainly on stepped spillways ~Figs. 1 and 2!. He has largely published his results and when you discuss these professional matters with him, you can feel his involvement and his advance knowledge relating to these hydraulic structures. This new book of Chanson’s is, in a way, a reflection of this background, and it is certainly not a usual hydraulic text. The work is subdivided into 10 chapters, which are briefly considered here for the interested reader: ~1! introduction; ~2! historical development; ~3! nappe flow regime; ~4! transition flow regime; ~5! skimming flow; ~6! mass transfer; ~7! design; ~8! accidents and failures; ~9! wave phenomena; and ~10! summary. In addition, there is a rather long glossary including a historical background, and nine appendices. Two or three years ago, nobody would have thought that a relatively large book might be published on the single topic of stepped spillways. Having contributed a lot to those structures not only on the hydraulics but also on the history starting thousands of years B.C., Chanson is obviously the person to render evidence of our professional ancestors that would already use steps to dissipate hydraulic energy along drops. Chapters 3 to 5 contain the real hydraulics of stepped spillways, with an introduction to the phenomena termed by now the nappe, the transition, and the skimming flow regimes, followed with detailed lists of sources on specific items, and finally the proposals for designing stepped spillways. Let us consider Chapter 5, for example, which opens with a presentation of flow features, continues with the inception of air entrainment, and closes