Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
When they opened the gates and the spillway started operating, the spillway was very noisy
and it could be heard for many miles. People complained about the noise.
Q ..
Can you describe a "Morning Glory" spillway?
It's shaped like a morning glory. It has a circular crest, which transitions down to a much
A:
smaller, vertical conduit. There are gates around the rim of the crest. At Fort Peck these
were vertical lift gates. When the gates were opened, the noise of the water going down into
the tunnel--the spillway drops vertically and then turns 90 degrees--the noise factor was
terrible. There was also vibration and cavitation. In the early ' 5 0 ' s we were looking at how
we could modify that spillway and we had a model study at WES in Vicksburg.
Hunter Rouse
Did you know Hunter Rouse while you were at the University of Iowa?
A:
Yes.
Can you tell me about him?
Dr. Rouse was a very demanding person. I never had a course from him. The one year when
A:
would have had a course from him, he was on sabbatical in France. But I knew him then
because we worked in the lab and encountered him frequently. I knew him better later when
he was a consultant to the Corps and through the work I've done with ASCE than while I was
in school. The last time I saw him was in 1988. I've been active in the Hydraulics Division
of ASCE since the early '50's. The ASCE Hydraulics Division has a national conference
each year, and in 1988 I was chairman of a task committee that organized sessions
commemorating the 50th anniversary of the division. The conference was in Colorado
Springs, and Hunter Rouse was there. He was not doing very well at that time. I've had
some notes from him since.
Dr. Rouse was one of the most influential people in hydraulics in this country. Rouse, Straub
and Ippen from MIT had very broad interests. They and Einstein, whose major interest was
sediment, were all consultants to the Corps on projects I worked on. Certainly Rouse's
books, especially his early books, were invaluable. I took Elementary Mechanics of Fluids
from John
in 1945 using a purple ditto copy of the manuscript of Rouse's second
book, Elementary Mechanics of Fluids, which was published in 1946. Rouse was a
consultant to the Corps for many years on many projects. He was one of our consultants on
Previous Page
