Constant Velocity Concept for Supercritical Branch Channel Flow

Based on the experimentally discovered fact that the mean velocity in the main channel remains practically constant across the branch offtake for supercritical flow in the main with free flow into the branch, it has been shown that the discharge distribution is a function of only the ‘branch channel parameter’’ which is given by the equation λ =L/B/F₁ where L is the width of the branch offtake, B is the width of the main channel and F₁ is the Fronde number in the main just before the branch. The theoretical discharge distribution developed has been experimentally checked for values of ? in the range 0.1 <λ<0.8.