CVEN3501

Assignment 2

CVEN3501 - WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING

ASSIGNMENT 2
ASSIGNMENT DUE: 21st MAY 2014, 5:00PM
Please submit in box marked Fiona Johnson on the 3rd floor opposite Room 309 in the
Civil and Environmental Engineering Building, with a cover sheet that has your name,
student number and workshop class.
Ensure that you show your working and/or summaries of the data that you have used for
the calculations. State any assumptions that are required.
Penalty for late submission is 10% per day.

You have been asked to determine design flows for a project located in Thora,
NSW (Latitude = -3026', Longitude = 152 47', Elevation = 50 m AHD). The
location shown in Figure 1.
The flows from two catchments are to be considered. The first is the full Bellinger
River catchment that drains to Thora. There is a streamflow gauge located on the
river at Thora. The second catchment is a local sub-catchment draining to the
project site. The locations of the main catchment and sub-catchment are shown
in Figure 2.
Part 1 (10 marks)
a) Using the recorded flow data at the Thora Gauge (spreadsheet on Moodle
and location shown on Figure 2) undertake a Flood Frequency Analysis for
the Bellinger River at Thora catchment to determine the peak flow in the 2%
AEP flood event.
b) On the log paper (available from Moodle) plot the observed Annual Maximum
Series flood values and the design values for the 50%., 20%, 10%, 5%, 2%
and 1% AEP events. (Note if you choose do this plot in Excel you must make
sure that you use a probability scale for the x-axis. This is different from a log
scale.)
Part 2 (5 marks)
A bridge is to be constructed at the outlet of a 27.97 km2 sub-catchment at
Thora. This bridge is to be designed for a 2% AEP event. Using the Probabilistic
Rational Method, what flow should the bridge designers use?
Part 3 (5 marks)
There are three main software programs used by industry to analyse flood flow in
catchments. The programs are: XP-RAFTS, RORB and WBNM. User manuals
for each of these programs have been uploaded to Moodle along with some
other resources. Based your knowledge from the course lectures, the resources

CVEN3501

Assignment 2

available on Moodle for this assignment and any other sources of information you
think are useful:
List the information/data you would need to be able to model the Thora
sub-catchment in one of these software programs.
Provide explanations for how each piece of information/data is used or
why it is required.
The information/data requirements are not the same for all software so make
sure that you are clear in your answer which software you are discussing. Your
answer to this question should not need to be longer than half a page long and
can be in point form.

Figure 1: Location of Thora (red point)

CVEN3501

Assignment 2

Figure 2: Catchment for Bellinger river and sub-catchment at Thora