Introduction to 29th Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Lecture

Presented at Annual Congress of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2008

It is with great pleasure that we are able to publish the following paper by M. Hanif Chaudhry, who was the recipient of the 2008 Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Lecture Award with the citation: “For over three decades of service to the hydraulic engineering community as an outstanding researcher, exemplary teacher, author of several widely used textbooks, and a highly regarded practicing engineer.” The paper is a summary of the lecture presented at the 2008 EWRI Congress in Honolulu. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to hydraulics and waterways and traditionally includes not only a lecture but an accompanying paper in the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering. The Rouse award was given for the first time in 1980, and I encourage readers to peruse the list of past award winners, which includes many of the pioneers of modern hydraulic engineering, on the ASCE website. Although much has been written about Hunter Rouse, namesake of the award and hydraulic engineer extraordinaire, I would recommend the excellent overview by Ettema (2006), which contains many additional references.

Dr. Chaudhry received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, in 1968 and 1970 and his B.Sc. degree with honors in civil engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan, in 1965. He has been serving at the University of South Carolina as associate dean (International Programs and Continuing Education), College of Engineering and Computing since August 2007 and as Mr. and Mrs. Irwin B. Kahn Professor since January 1998. He was the chairman, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from August 1997 through August 2008. From 1983 to 1997, he served as a professor at Washington State University, and he began his academic career in the Department of Civil Engineering, Old Dominion University, where he served from 1979 to 1983. His areas of specialization are fluid transients and the modeling of hydraulic systems.

Dr. Chaudhry has received many honors and has had a prolific career as a researcher and author. He is the author of Open-Channel Flow, 2nd ed. (Chaudhry 2010); coauthor of Hydraulic Engineering, 2nd ed. (Roberson et al. 1998); author of Applied Hydraulic Transients, 2nd ed. (Chaudhry, 1987); and senior editor of Closed-Conduit Flow (Chaudhry and Yevjevich, 1981), and Computer Modeling of Free-Surface and Pressurized Flows (Chaudhry and Mays, 1999). He has edited seven volumes of conference proceedings and published over 120 journal and conference papers and 35 technical reports. He has acted as a consultant to the United Nations, UN Development Program, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California Department of Water Resources, Institute of Computer Applications in Science and Engineering, NASA Langley, and many other agencies all over the world. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, USAID, EPA, and Corps of Engineers, among numerous others.

Dr. Chaudhry has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering since 1985. He continues to manage a heavy load of papers in his field in spite of his many additional responsibilities. He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a diplomate of the Academy of Water Resources Engineers as well as a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the International Association for Hydraulic Research.

The paper by Dr. Chaudhry discusses several applications of one-dimensional, unsteady, free-surface and pressurized flow mathematical models in hydraulic engineering with an emphasis on both successes and failures of the models.