Irrigation works : $b the principles on which their design and working should be based, with special details relating to Indian canals and some proposed improvements — John Shaqi
Irrigation works : $b the principles on which their design and working should be based, with special details relating to Indian canals and some proposed improvementsBellasis, E. S. (Edward Skelton)
Science
Irrigation works : $b the principles on which their design and working should be based, with special details relating to Indian canals and some proposed improvements
Bellasis, E. S. (Edward Skelton)
Canals; Irrigation
In the canals which have their headworks among the mountains of Western
America there are frequent tunnels and syphons and the canals often run
in steep sidelong ground. There are great lengths of tunnel and syphon
in the Marseilles and Verdun Canals and there are long tunnels in the
Periyar Canal in Madras and in the Upper Swat Canal in the North West
Frontier Province of India.
The Tieton Canal, Washington, U.S.A., traverses steep sidelong ground
which would be liable to slip if a large cutting were made. The
cross-section of the channel is a circle, 8-ft. 3¹⁄₂-ins. in diameter,
with the upper part removed, so that the depth is 6 feet. It is made of
reinforced concrete 4 inches thick and the sides are tied together by
iron bars which run across the channel above the water. In the Santa Ana
Canal the channel consists for 2¹⁄₂ miles of a flume made of wooden
“staves.”
A canal constructed in Wyoming, U.S.A., after taking off from a river,
passes through a tunnel into another valley and is turned into another
stream which thus becomes the canal. This is said to save loss of water
by percolation. The stream is winding while a canal could have been made
straighter. There may, owing to the ground near the stream being
saturated, have been less loss of water at first than there would have
been in the artificial channel but, owing to the smaller wetted area,
there would probably have been an eventual saving in adopting the
latter. The real advantage of adopting the natural stream was probably a
saving in the cost of construction. (_Min. Proc. Inst. C.E._ Vol.
CLXII.)
Irrigation from canals which are supplied from reservoirs differs in no
respect from that from other canals. The principles on which reservoir
capacities should be calculated and earthen and masonry dams constructed
are given in _River and Canal Engineering_. Sometimes, as for instance
when a reservoir becomes seriously reduced in size owing to silt
deposit, the water is run off after the bed of the reservoir has been
soaked, and crops are grown on the soaked soil.
The distribution of the water of a canal as between the main channel and
the branches, is effected by means of the regulators at the
bifurcations. When the supply is ample and the demand great, the
channels may all be running nearly full. When the demand exceeds the
supply, the water may be reduced proportionately in each branch but this
may result in the water of a branch being too low to give proper
supplies to the distributaries or some of them, and in the water of a
distributary not commanding the higher ground. Moreover it violates the
principle of keeping the water in bulk as far as possible. It is more
usual to give each branch full supply, or a certain large fraction of
the full supply, in turn, and similarly with the distributaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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