THE RATIONAL METHOD EXPLAINED IN UNDER 5 MINUTES - transcript

When it comes to stormwater management, whenever it rains, that water must go somewhere.
For thousands of years, natural processes have developed channels, streams, and stormwater
mitigation that are occurring in our natural environment. But as soon as human activity
interferes, additional precautions must be taken to prevent flooding or damage to the
environment. Primarily, the use of impervious surfaces such that are found in roadways, roofs,
and other man-made structures cause changes to the natural stormwater functions of the
environment. Hydrologists and engineers needed methods to determine how stormwater would
interact with their environment. These methods were developed close to 100 years ago and are
simplistic to some of today's methods but are still useful for many practices. These methods
need to be computationally simple to allow for the use on a slide rule calculator.
One of these methods is known as the rational method and has been long used for calculating
peak flows and other factors regarding stormwater design.

So we're going to be introducing what the rational method is. Basically, it revolves around this
core equation of Q equals CIA. Let me explain each component of this equation. Q stands for
the peak flow in cubic feet per second off the stormwater site. C stands for the runoff coefficient.
I equals the rainfall intensity in inches per hour. And A equals the drainage area in acres. It also
must be noted that the rational method has some natural limitations. First off, the drainage area
cannot be larger than 200 acres for this equation to be accurate. the peak flow is assumed to
occur when the entire watershed is contributing runoff.
And the rainfall intensity is assumed to be uniform over a time duration equal to or greater than
the time of concentration t sub C. The peak flow recurrence interval is assumed to be equal to
the rainfall intensity recurrence interval. So let's get into each components of this equation. So
for the runoff coefficient C, this represents a ratio of runoff to rainfall. You can see in this table
here that there are many different area types with character of surface with different runoff
coefficients. For example, an area will have a greater runoff coefficient if there is more
impervious surface such as in a downtown or neighborhood area where there's lots of
impervious surfaces such as asphalt. Then if we look at somewhere like a lawn or a flat lawn or
anything else like that, we can see that the runoff coefficient is going to be less because any
area with natural occurring surfaces such as lawn or forest are going to have a lower runoff
coefficient, generating less overall runoff, meaning there'll be a much smaller peak flow value
coming off the site. Next we'll look at rainfall intensity I. This indicates the rainfall severity on the
site. This can have quite a range, but will have a definite impact on the equation. Next is the
drainage area A, which indicates the total basin size, and it's measured in a horizontal plane.
Like I said, we can determine runoff coefficients from the tables we see there, and this will play
a major part in using the rational method for our equations. Mannion's roughness can also be
used for overland sheet flow and more complicated equations.

Let's go over two different rational method design examples here. One that is much simpler and
one that has a few more advanced features involved.
For this first one, we want to determine the peak flow of a site. It has an area of 10 acres, a
runoff coefficient of 0.78, and a rainfall intensity of 2 inches per hour. How would we determine
the peak flow? We would use the equation Q equals C I A. So Q equals C, the runoff coefficient
of 0.78, I, which is equal to two inches per hour, and A, which is 10 acres. This gives us a peak
flow value of 15.6 CFS. Now maybe you're thinking, how does acres convert to feet per
second? But as you can see with these different dimensions of the equations that everything
works out in the problem. Next, we can look at the second example here with the rational
method.
Determine the maximum peak flow of a 14 acre site with a 50% downtown area and a 50% flat
lawn area that have a rainfall intensity of 2.5 inches per hour. So because this area is split and
does not have one kind of land use, we need to determine an average runoff coefficient since
it's equally split 50-50 and then determine the peak flow. So since this 50% downtown area, if
we look at our chart here, we're looking at for the maximum peak flow. So we're going to be
using the 0.95 for the runoff coefficient. For flat lawn, we're going to be using 0.17 for our
coefficient. If we average those because they have the same amount of area, we get a runoff
coefficient of 0.56.
Then using Q equals CIA, get 0.56 times 2.5 times 14 acres, gives us a peak flow of 19.6 CFS.
And those are the basics of the rational method.

It's a long used method for calculating peak flows from project sites and was designed with
simplicity in mind. Although there's more advanced methods such as continuous simulation
hydrology that have come along, many jurisdictions still use this method. You can find an
overview of different methods such as continuous simulation, the scs runoff method, or the
rational method in our ultimate hydrology guide, which is 100% free and you can find it in the
description box down below. If you have any questions about the rational method, you should
leave it in a comment down below. Anyways, we thank you so much for watching and we will
see you guys next time.

Hydrology: Rational Method Peak Runoff Determination and Example Problem -

transcript
hello, out there how are you viewers welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to try
things a little differently, or at least something we haven't done for quite a long time. Where
instead of just going straight to the chalkboard like we used to, we're going to be working with
prepared slides and annotating them as we go. So let me know if this is something that you
prefer. I think we're gonna start doing this more often. We're gonna try to stick to shorter videos
and see if a more focused approach might be more appealing to people. So today, we're gonna
be talking about the rational method, which is a subject within hydrology that engineers use to
calculate peak flow rates for a watershed. And this is pretty popular.
It's very simple. It's quite accurate. And really, you only need a little bit of information. You need,
of course, your characteristic land use. So this tends to be things like residential area, light
industrial, woodland, there's a whole bunch of different ones, and they all have different, what
are essentially like ratios of how much runoff is produced for a given amount of rainfall. So
maybe it produces like 60%, that's not exactly what it means, but it's relatively rough explanation
of what that is. And there's different tables where that can be looked up. Another important part
of information is going to be rainfall intensity. Now, it's important to keep note that this is rainfall
intensity. So this is going to be like inches per hour.