Volume 34 (2012): Edition 1 (March 2012)

The facilities belonging to Przedsiębiorstwo Wodociągów i Kanalizacji (PWiK) in Głogów have been erected on the floodplain of the Odra river. In consequence, they are in a state of permanent dampness or flooded. Therefore, the need has arisen for indicating an effective method of draining the facilities. In the paper, four different methods of solving the problem have been indicated which are differentiated in both engineering and economic respects.

Parameters of soil constitutive models are not constant. This mainly concerns the strain parameters such as K, G or E_oed modules. What influences their values is not only soil type, structure and consistency, but also the history of stress and strain states. So, it is the question of the current state but also of what happened to the subsoil in the past (regarding geological and anthropological activity) and what impact would have the planned soil–structure interaction.

This paper presents an overview of the literature showing how much the soil constitutive model parameters depend on loading and boundary conditions of a particular geotechnical problem. Model calibration methods are shortly described with special attention paid to the author’s “Loading Path Method”, which allows estimation of optimum parameter values of any soil constitutive model. An example of the use of this method to estimate strain parameters E and ν of Coulomb–Mohr elasticperfectly plastic model is given.

An important part of the work connected with planning modernization of outlet devices of Złotniki storage reservoir on the Kwisa river was numerical modelling of flow conditions in the flume of the side-channel spillway. The modelling was preceded by the analysis of operating principles of such a device and performing analytical calculations that defined the spillway capacity ability as a function of the required water levels in the reservoir and the conditions of water flow through the flume that are significant to spillway operation. The results of the numerical modelling performed pointed to the evident need to reconstruct this device, guaranteeing exploitation safety of the reservoir, mainly in view of the computational discharges, exceeding considerably the nominal capacity ability of the reservoir’s outlet installation in the existing constructional state.

The main aim of the article was application of some statistical tests for investigation of weak stationarity of hydrologic time series. The tests were applied to mean monthly flow and maximum annual flow on three rivers: two Polish and one American river. Firstly, the modified Mann–Kendall test for autocorrelated data was used to detect trend. After detrending we used “unit root tests” based on the DF test and “stationarity tests” based on the KPSS test. The tests were investigated and compared in some aspects: analysis of residuals, application to seasonal series, AIC and Schwarz values.

With a view to protecting areas lying near the Nysa Kłodzka river and in order to reduce flood wave in Wrocław Waterway System, construction of a water reservoir near Kamieniec Ząbkowicki is being planned. After analysing the hydrology and hydraulics of the river Nysa Kłodzka and the function of reservoirs in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki cascade, a numerical seepage model, based on finite element method (FEM) and taking into account bedrock geology, drainage design and dam sealing, has been proposed. Boussinesq’s mathematical model was used to calculate unconfined groundwater table and vector field of seepage velocity. Building a numerical terrain model and visualisation of the water table in GIS tools enabled presenting calculation results in 3-D space.