State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering
Sichuan University

24, South Section No.1, Yihuan Road, Chengdu, P.R.China 610065.
http://www.hydraulics.org.cn/Outline
Authorized by National Planning Board (NPB) in May 1988, the State Key Laboratory of
Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering became the first approved State Key Laboratory inhydraulic engineering field.
Since 1952, the discipline of Hydraulics and River Dynamics has been selected as the key
construction disciplines in Sichuan University, and then it was selected for the first batch of
doctoral program in China in 1981 before it was approved firstly as the state key disciplines ofhydraulics in China in 1988. Furthermore, it is approved as the first batch of Chang Jiang Scholars
Program in 1998. Then, in 2000 hydraulic engineering discipline becomes the first-level discipline
awarding doctoral degree. Moreover, in 2005, basing on the laboratory, the construction of the "985
Project" Technology Innovation Class I platform was approved by the Ministry of Education. Up tonow, the Laboratory has three state key disciplines (Hydraulics and River Dynamics, GeotechnicalEngineering and Solid Mechanics), three first-level disciplines awarding doctoral degree (HydraulicEngineering, Mechanics, Environmental Science and Engineering) and three doctoral programs(Geotechnical Engineering, Structural Engineering and Ecology).
The overall goal of the laboratory can be summarized as the following three points: (1) toconstruct world-class academic platform for engineering hydraulics and mountain river field; (2) topromote our technological innovation, personnel training and academic exchanges in the Hydraulics
and Mountain River area in China; (3) to support water conservancy and hydropower project
construction and disaster prevention in mountain river. With the construction of high-level researchteam and modern public platform, distinct characteristics of the laboratory have been formed in thefollowing research areas: high dam hydraulics, sediment dynamics in mountain rivers, water
environment in high dams and large reservoirs, dam and reservoir bank security and intelligent
scheduling of cascade hydropower stations.

Research Achievements

In recent 5-years, the Laboratory has undertaken 362 national major engineering research
projects, covering the hydropower stations with the world’s highest technical indexes, such as
Jinping First Stage Hydropower Station, Jinping Second Stage Hydropower Station, Xiluodu
Hydropower Station, Xiaowan Hydropower Station, Shuangjiangkou Hydropower Station, andHuangdeng Hydropower Station. The Laboratory also undertook national key projects including
Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station, Baihetan Hydropower Station, Wudongde Hydropower Station,
Nuozhadu Hydropower Station, Pubugou Hydropower Station, Zipingpu Hydropower Station, etc.
The Laboratory has solved a series of scientific and technical problem from engineering design tooperation, playing an irreplaceable role in the scientific and technological development of thisresearch field. Both the scientific and technical achievements in our laboratory have beenrecognized nationally, for instance, the laboratory has received 1 second prize of national
technological innovation award, 4 second prize of national scientific and technological progressaward, 9 first prize of provincial or ministry technological innovation award and scientific andtechnological progress award. During the same period, the Laboratory has published 182 papers
indexed by SCI, 225 papers indexed by EI, and 13 monographs. The Laboratory has also been
conferred 83 national invention patents, 5 American invention patents, and 8 software copyrights.
The Laboratory has participated in drafting 5 volumes of technical specifications and standards.
For more details, the Laboratory has made outstanding research achievements in the following
five research areas that are closely related to high dam project safety and mountainous river healthissues.

1: Flush prevention and erosion reduction mechanism and technology in high dam
projects

In this field of research, innovative achievements or inventions have been made such as theCollision-free Hierarchical Distributed Jet Flow Technique, the Adaptive Multi-stepped Overflow
technique, the Classified Shaft Spin Flow technology, the Multi-stage Expanding and Shrinking
technique for erosion prevention, the Single-stage Flush Prevention and Erosion Reduction
technique and the New Turbulent Modeling Method and et al.
2: Generation mechanisms of extreme flood and sediment disasters prevention
technology

The generation and cumulative mechanisms of mountainous floods and sediment disasters
have been revealed. Academic achievements have been made mainly in the aspects of sediment anddebris flow disasters, river confluences and compound channel problems. Especially, we havedeveloped a unified calculation method of flow capacity in mountainous compound channels. Inaddition, a method to calculate the additional resistance in mountainous intersected channels has
also been developed.
3: Response mechanism of ecological environment to watershed hydropower
development

Hydropower is a clean energy resources, attracting more and more attentions to its
development. However, adverse environmental and ecological problems can be resulted during its
development. In order to deal with these problems, a set of experimental devices to reveal thegeneration and release mechanism of total-dissolved-gas over-saturated flow and its effects onaquatic lives, especially the fishes have been developed. In addition, achievements have been madefor the transport mechanism of density flow under temperature stratification condition and its
operational numerical models, and a methodology for thermal exchange coefficient of ice water inreservoirs. A unique fish spawning index system of hydraulic habitat has also been developed.

4: Mechanical response characteristics of rock structures and project safety evaluation
techniques

Generally, the major academic achievements are made in: 1) a joint network reconstructions
method to reveal the statistical rule of strength and the failure mechanism; 2) The catastrophic
energy theory of rock damage; 3) large deformation mechanism of high stress rock；4) new control
technology of underground cavern deformation and 5) reliability evaluation technique of projectsafety. Moreover, new findings have been obtained in the following two aspects:(1) Disaster investigation of Wenchuan earthquake between 2008 and 2009
Before 2008 the Longmenshan fault belt had been considered mild, however Wenchuan
earthquake totally overturned the above vision! The quake reminds us that our knowledge on active
faults is limited and in disaster reduction it should be prudent to use the earthquake intensity
estimation based on limited historical records.
(2) Mechanism of reservoir landslides
The research focused on the conflict between theoretical prediction and actual statistical dataon the landslides in reservoir areas. Statistics shows that most of reservoir landslides occur duringreservoir filling; however the prediction based on saturated / unsaturated soil mechanics tells us that
reservoir impoundment is beneficial to bank stability. The research addresses the importance ofgeological structures and thinks that confined water pressure plays an important role in bankstability.
5: Efficient utilization of water resources in watershed cascade development in southwest
areas

A new method of set pair analysis and wavelet analysis for runoff sets has been proposed.
Automatic recognition and selection, adaptive model parameters calibration for prediction modeland method of optimum runoff have been realized. A decision support system for the watershedmanagement of cascade hydropower stations has been developed.

The major research challenges
 High-speed flow hydraulics and high-dam engineering
Targeting the safety of flood discharging in highdam engineering, the challenges in this research field
include new technology of flood discharge and energy
dissipation from high-dams, high-speed air-water twophase flow characteristics and their engineering impacts,prediction and control of cavitation, new aeration
techniques for cavitation reduction under large water head and flow rate, and optimal design ofhydraulic structures for flood discharging in high-dam engineering.
 Mountain river dynamics and mountain river engineering
Targeting the mitigation of mountain river
hazards, the challenges of the researches include
bed-load transport for broadly graded sediment inMountainRivers,physicalandnumericalmodeling of river sediment transport and its
engineering applications, bed morphology incomplex river channels with vegetation, themechanism of hazard generation and mitigation
strategies to prevent flash floods in mountainous regions.

 Environmental hydraulics and mountain river
protection
Targeting the environmental protection in hydraulic andhydropower engineering, the challenges of this research include
environmental

hydraulics

in

large

deepwater

reservoirs,prediction of pollutant transport and fate in water, impact ofhydropower projects on environment and ecology, ecologicalrestoration techniques, ecological water demand in rivers andecological water management in reservoirs, and water quality
monitoring technology and equipment development.
 Dam and reservoir bank safety
Targeting the safety of high dam and its foundation,
researches should be emphasized in this field include
fundamental

theoriesofrockmechanics;

instability

mechanism of steep and high side slope, physical andnumerical modeling of high-dam and foundation stability,
monitoring and management of dam safety, and mechanismof landslide in reservoir and its prevention.
 Hydro-informatics and new technology in hydraulic engineering.
Targeting the intelligent operation of hydropowerengineering, researches should be concentrated include
numerical simulation of complex turbulent flows in
hydraulic engineering, optimal theory and technique ofwater management in cascade hydropower stations, andconstruction management of hydraulic and hydropower
projects.