September 16, 2026
The No-Rise Surprise
Why Additional Conveyance Area Doesn’t Always Lower Water Surface
Wind-induced waves in reservoirs.
Written by Chris Goodell, P.E., D. WRE | WEST Consultants
Copyright © RASModel.com. 2010. All rights reserved.
Though HEC-RAS has no function for computing wave heights, its a fairly simply procedure that can be done external to RAS and incorporated into your design, or breach assumptions.
Copyright © RASModel.com. 2010. All rights reserved.
Though HEC-RAS has no function for computing wave heights, its a fairly simply procedure that can be done external to RAS and incorporated into your design, or breach assumptions.
There are equations for wave heights and run up as a function of wind speed, reservoir depth, and fetch length. You simply gather some historical wind data that you can assign probabilities to. Assign a wind direction (to be conservative, you can assume the longest fetch length, unless the wind never blows that way), then compute wave heights and run up for different frequencies of wind magnitudes. Which frequency you design to (100-year, 50-year, etc) is up to you and your client.
Here’s a good place to start:
http://140.194.76.129/publications/eng-manuals/em1110-2-1420/c-15.pdf
Here are some other interesting links that might lead to additional information:
http://www.wldelft.nl/cons/area/wds/im/wave-dynamic-structure.pdf
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