Structures & Features

We have seen river networks consisting of River Section Nodes and River Boundary Nodes to provide underlying information about the river.

Several other node types are available to represent various structures and features in your river.

It is always recommended, however, that river networks should be running and stable with River Section (and boundary) nodes alone, prior to adding any other node types.

The hydraulic structures and features available include (among others):

Bridges

Culverts

Conduits

Orifice

Pond

Weirs

Flood Modeller also provides functionality to Create 1D Reservoir nodes from a map and to Create 1D Spill nodes from a map.

Connectivity of structures within your network is handled a little differently to River Section nodes.

Connectivity of structures in river networks

To add a structure, for example a bridge node, to your network, initially create a River Section (or Replicate) located directly at the upstream face of the bridge. In this River Section, set the Distance to next value as zero.

Now select this node, and on the 1D River Build tab, select the bridge node. Click on the map and (as always) the new node will be added immediately downstream of the selected node that has Distance to next = 0.

The bridge label needs to be the same as this upstream node (the one with Distance to next = 0).

In the bridge unit properties you will set details of your bridge width. You can also specify different cross-sectional data at the downstream face of the bridge, if required. 

We refer the reader to the 1D nodes reference section for further details of all river node types.