Test of Trapezoidal Hyetograph Method with Laboratory Watershed Data
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 4
Abstract
Trapezoidal hyetographs are common in both real-world small watersheds and laboratory watersheds because (1) real-world hyetographs are often represented by line charts that can be divided into multiple trapezoidal rainfall pulses, and (2) laboratory rainfalls are usually generated by rainfall simulators uniformly in space and time, but when considering infiltration loss, the excess hyetographs may be approximated to be trapezoidal. Particularly, a trapezoidal hyetograph can be converted to a runoff hydrograph simply, accurately, and theoretically based on the general unit hydrograph model. The objective of this research is thus to test the theoretical trapezoidal hyetograph method with laboratory watershed rainfall-runoff data. The results showed that this theoretical method agrees very well with laboratory watershed data, with determination coefficients for both constant and variable (incident) rainfall intensities. Therefore, the trapezoidal hyetograph method can be used to convert any line-chart hyetograph to a runoff hydrograph analytically, where rectangular and triangular hyetographs are special cases. Finally, the trapezoidal hyetograph method for a constant excess rainfall intensity (or the general rational method) is comparable to the classic kinematic wave theory for overland flow, but it is much simpler in applications.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the constructive comments offered by the six anonymous reviewers, the associate editor, and the editor, who helped improve this paper during its preparation.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 4 • August 2024
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2023
Accepted: Feb 6, 2024
Published online: May 10, 2024
Published in print: Aug 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Oct 10, 2024
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