The Idea of a Hydraulic Engineering Journal

Abstract

The beginning of an editorship and the 50th anniversary of the first appearance of the Journal of the Hydraulics Division lend themselves to reflections on the ideals that can animate a hydraulic engineering journal. The contemporary context presents multiple extratechnical challenges. The gap between what is being practiced and what is being published is perceived as widening. Some would prefer a more scientific orientation, arguing that our journal compares unfavorably with other “purer” journals in its rigor and prestige. Recent events involving a prestigious science journal have cast doubt on the efficacy of the conventional peerreview procedure. The interests of our readership seem to be becoming increasingly fragmented and specialized. Developments in electronic publishing promise faster, less expensive publication aimed at more targeted audiences, thereby reinforcing the trend to fragmentation. These general issues are neither new nor peculiar to our journal see Batchelor 1981 for comments on some of these questions . Real-world problems with which hydraulic engineers must grapple are messy. The extremely broad spectrum of length and time scales, the large spatial heterogeneities, compounded by the sparsity of detailed data, the ill-understood or imprecise conditions at highly irregular, possibly deformable boundaries—all contribute to the technical questions that have traditionally fascinated and frustrated the hydraulician. These complexities may, however, pale in comparison with those raised by the more recent interest in the interaction between flow and biota and the larger implications for aqueous ecosystems. A definition of hydraulic engineering will not be attempted here; a personal and bracing view is expressed in Liggett 2002 . Suffice it to say that a response to these challenges requires an equally broad range of methodologies and a similarly heterogeneous journal, where fundamental studies of idealized situations, exploiting sophisticated experimental and theoretical techniques, will jostle with more applied investigations, guided by dimensional analysis and relying heavily on simple lumped models and statistical determination of empirical parameters and coefficients. In the ecology of ideas, a diversity of topics and techniques makes possible cross-fertilization and competition that should lead to a more robust and vibrant hydraulics community. Technical standards must be maintained, although the appropriate level of rigor can become a broad and deformable gray area for some, uncomfortably so with much left to “engineering” judgment. Probably rightly so, rigor has never been a hallmark of engineers;