Culvert Analysis

Posted Fri Apr 9, 2010 in

I think I wrote that I was tasked with a project on a really short fuse late last week. Of course, the information I received was incomplete, but that’s normal for quick projects when someone else started the work and I finish it.

Hmmm… sometimes I really think I’m a finisher. I seem to draw a lot of projects that someone else started… and then I finish. What does that mean?

I got into the the work and found myself needing to execute some culvert hydraulics computations over the weekend. I logged into my office computer (from the house) and cranked up the commercial software we use. It refused to load, citing a license issue.

It was the weekend, so no IT support was available. I did what I always do when faced with such a problem — I started looking for public domain software. I should have guessed, but the Federal Highway Administration provides a program to execute culvert computations based on the research they supported for so many years. The software is called HY-8 and is very good.

I downloaded it, installed it on my home workstation, and did my computations. I got the project done on time and close enough to budget to count.

I really hate being saddled with commercial software that is cumbersome because of some licensing requirement. When I need to get my work done, I don’t need software that is spring-loaded to the pissed-off position.

The FHWA software is recommended.

  1. I don’t bother with “culvert software” for culverts. I find culvert work I do falls into one of 3 categories:
    1. do the calcs by hand
    2. use excel I have one sheet for certain culvert processes I’ve been working on for years.
    3. just use HEC-RAS.

    With all of this, I’ve never needed “culvert software”

    — Ryan Waldron    9 April 2010, 20:37    #

  2. For some conditions, I think hand calculations are fine and do them myself. But, for some configurations I want to use the results that FHWA (that means us as American taxpayers) spent so much to collect the laboratory data for. I think those results are embedded in HEC-RAS, but RAS is a pain to use to construct a rating table.

    As it turns out, I really don’t like CulvertMaster. The HY-8 program was a find (at least for me). It’s straightforward to use, is public domain (wish it was open source), and produces a table I can use to document my results.

    I’m not arguing, just saying what works for me.

    If I was going to work up my own program, I’d write the code in R (plain text) so I would not be tied to a particular OS and then the source (plain text) would be archive-quality.

    Welcome to Random Ruminations.

    — ruminator    10 April 2010, 05:34    #