Traditional and Numerical Approaches for Estimating Reservoir Routing Parameters

Abstract Reservoir routing is a strategy that calculates the outflow hydrograph from a reservoir based on the inflow hydrograph, taking into consideration the elevation, storage, and discharge characteristics of the reservoir and spillways. The conservation of mass equation is solved assuming that outflow discharge and storage volume are precisely proportionate. According to this paper, the conventional approaches for reservoir routing, parameter analysis, and evaluation require solving a transcendental equation at each time step. A differential equation’s numerical solution is reservoir routing. Any numerical technique can be applied, and they are all easier to understand than the old way. The study also shows that there are benefits to using reservoir surface elevation to define the governing equation rather than the conventional approach of using storage capacity. A situation is shown in which reservoir outflow can be controlled by gates or sluiceways. Reservoir routing using numerical techniques are evaluated using Math lab program version (7.12) and compared with conventional approach for reservoir routing. The inflow from one of Iraq’s dams was analyzed, and the outflow was estimated, with the results demonstrating that the numerical methods are identical, simpler, and more reliable than conventional method.