Evaluation of Error Due to Applying Average Rating Curve as downstream Boundary Condition in Unsteady Flow Modeling

The rating curve is the relationship between the water stage and the associated discharge in a givensection of a channel. In steady flow, this relationship usually has exponential type, whereas inunsteady it flow has a looped shape. Since direct developing of actual looped rating curve by usinghydrometric methods is merely possible, steady-state rating curve is commonly used as a downstreamboundary condition in mathematical modeling of unsteady flow which leads to relevant error in modelresults. In this study, in order to evaluate this error, a method is presented by using the HEC-RASmodel of unsteady flow in a prismatic channel with different bed slopes, roughness coefficients andchannel lengths as effective parameters. In various channel geometries , the rating curves of both theapproximate and the reference states are obtained. Then statistical comparison between the results wasdone. Accordingly, 120 R-squared (R2) values refer to 240 different channel conditions, wereconsidered and the errors were analyzed which indicate that the error is declined by increasing bedslope and channel length, in addition by roughness reduction. The maximum rate of the error occurredby any of effective parameters including bed slope, roughness coefficient and channel length wasevaluated in order of appearance; 0.2617, 0.1507 and 0.1673. In addition, the sensitivity of all theparameters in different modeling conditions may be distinguished by using the obtained graphs.