DESIGN RELATIONSHIPS FOR ROCK CHUTE CHANNELS

Abstract

Rock chute channels are used in many watershed management applications such as channel stabilization,grade control, embankment overtopping, and energy flow dissipation structures. Using the -theorem of the dimensionalanalysis and the incomplete self-similarity concept, a theoretical rock slope stability equation is developed. Then the twocoefficients of the rock stability equation are estimated, for each value of the slope channel, using the experimental resultsof Abt and Johnson (1991) and of Robinson et al. (1998). Using both the uniform open channel flow equation with theManning coefficient calculated by the equation proposed by Rice et al. (1998b) (eq. 21) and the rock stability equation(eq. 17a), a direct relationship (eq. 27) between the uniform flow depth and the characteristic rock size is derived.