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Research to Improve Hydraulic Design of Fish Passage System

Welfare Technology & equipment Education & academia +3 more

SPAIN - University of Valladolid's Applied Ecohydraulics Group (GEA) has developed a software capable of calculating the design and simulate fish scales.

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Professor Francisco Javier Sanz Ronda said that the ultimate goal of the software is to improve the hydraulic design of fish passage systems.

"In the projects we have done, we have seen a need for precise hydraulic design - a design that conventionally was not satisfying. It was necessary to study how water behaves in these systems and use some software application for modeling and working with reliable design of these structures," he explained.

From this need arose the Scales 2012 software, developed by GEA member Juan Francisco Fuentes Perez.

"The goal is to understand the equations operating in the design and creating a computer program capable of modeling the hydraulic behavior scales," said Professor Sanz Ronda.

For the software to perform, a series of hydraulic models and measurements in the fish passage systems were required. The software, which is still in development, has a demo version.

The program provides a wizard from which you can design two types of scales troughs - landfill scales and scales submerged in orifices and vertical slits. It also allows free design and simulates any structure formed by successive landfills.

Once installed the application opens and displays the login window with three basic operational functions: free design, design types and open.

First, the system asks for the maximum power dissipated. Once introduced, you select the type of call flow defined that will flow through it. This will flow through the river in the design and the gap between ponds. Also select a setting from the first dump and a landfill type. The program automatically calculates the total drop and defines a preset scale design.

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