Date of Award:

5-2014

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Blake P. Tullis

Committee

Blake P. Tullis

Committee

Mac McKee

Committee

Michael C. Johnson

Committee

Barton Smith

Committee

Gilberto Urroz

Abstract

Due to a recent increase in environmental awareness regarding fish passage through hydraulic structures, including culverts, an evaluation of passage of wild brown trout through a weir-baffled, prototype-scale culvert, was conducted under a variety of culvert slopes and discharge conditions. The influence of the fish sample population and the lengths of the individual fish on passage rates were investigated. The data showed that the fish sample size of 25 per test was sufficiently large to minimize sample size dependency. Fish behavior, including resting/staging zone locations, while traversing the culvert was observed and reported. Two preferable resting zones for the fish were noted while swimming upstream in baffled culvert.

The influence of flow rates and culvert slopes on the forward velocities and reverse velocities were evaluated. An inverse relationship was observed between fish passage success and flow rate and/or culvert slope. No fish successfully passed through the baffled culvert at the maximum discharge (85 L/s) for culvert slope of 5 and 6%. New culvert designs should provide appropriate hydraulic conditions to improve the fish upstream movements.

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