Margaret S. Petersen
Gavins Point Dam, the closure material was chalk which isn't very heavy and isn't very big.
Straub developed a closure operation based on a friction closure, placing chalk with a drag
line mounted on a barge across a wide blanket extending bank-to-bank across the closure
section.
Talking about foreign influences, this type of closure goes back to work by Ishbash, who was
a Russian. Ishbash did the original work on this, developing a dam closure procedure with
a sill of minimum cross section. Straub called this "obstruction control" in contrast to his
use of "friction control" by means of a wide blanket at Gavins Point. The closure section
was on the left
and as the blanket was raised, more and more flow was diverted
through the power plant on the right bank.
So they would dredge it upstream and let it go down and settle in?
Well, they had the material stockpiled; it had come out of excavation for the power plant and
A:
other excavation work at the site.
German
Such foreign influence was important, but apparently the German influence was somewhat
predominant in the 1920's and
I was fortunate enough to have talked to some people
who did Freeman Fellow work and American Society of Mechanical Engineers
studies in Germany. A number of engineers from the Corps of Engineers did studies at the
technical high school at Charlottenburg in the 1930's (now the Technical University).
General Casey was always talking about all of his friends who had been over there on those
scholarships and had completed major studies.
Yes. General Casey was a Freeman Scholar in 1933-34. Vogel was there in 1927-28 with
A:
Straub, O'Brien, and others.
Dewey was a Freeman Scholar in 1940-41 and a
number of other officers and civilian employees were also in the program. Vogel became
the first director of WES in 1929 when he returned from Europe.
So there was always this question because when you read Rouse's book, you find a lot of
influence of German hydraulic engineering.
The German influence on fluid mechanics is very direct, I think, through Rouse and others
A:
who studied in Germany; Freeman and the Freeman Scholars; the Europeans, including
Prandtl,
and Spannhake, who lectured here; and those who immigrated to the United
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