HEC-RAS Version 2.0 Bug

We use HEC frequently in our office here at the Corps of Engineers for large scale simulations, but have found Flow Pro 2.0 (ProSoft Apps) to be a more useful solution for the following smaller scale design problems:

1) fast and easy water surface profiles for ushaped, circular, and rectangular channels
2) computing initial design parameters like critical depth, critical slope, normal depth, etc. for the same channel shapes.
3) orifice flow
4) sluicegate flow
5) weir flow

Flow Pro can be downloaded from ProSoft Apps' web site at http://www.europa.com/~psapps and evaluated for free. Registration is only $39.95.

I hope you fellow HEC-users will not be offended by this post. I'm not trying to suggest that Flow Pro is a replacement for HEC-RAS, but rather that it has some value in addition to HEC-RAS for smaller scale work.

Rick Palmer
Rick.A.Palmer@usace.army.mil

There is a minor problem with the sluice gate routines in HEC-RAS Version 2.0. The program displays the following error message:

"A trunnion height not set"

However, the trunnion height variable should not be used in modeling a sluice gate, and the data entry routines do not allow the user to enter a value for the trunnion height.

The recommended workaround for this problem is to change the type of gate temporarily to a radial gate. Since this type of gate has to have a trunnion height, the program makes the data entry field accessible to the user. After entering a value in this field, you should switch back to the sluice gate type for the remaining data entry. The program will not use the trunnion height value for any computations, so it doesn't matter what value you enter. However, entering a value in this way will eliminate the spurious error message.