High-Velocity Flow in Open Channels: A Symposium: Foreword

Although specific problems of high-velocity flow arising from changes in open-channel cross section or alinement had frequently been solved by model tests, not until the early 1930's did the broad applicability of elastic-wave analysis to such gravity-wave phenomena become evident. The resulting principles of wave mechanics were first applied at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena in 1935, during the study of flow around the curves of the Los Angeles County flood-relief channels in California; shortly thereafter similar applications were made to channel contractions at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Cambridge, and to channel expansions at the State University of Iowa in Iowa City.