Flumes and weirs
ARTS incorporates an easy-to-use design capability for flumes and weirs. The range of flumes catered for includes long-throated flumes of rectangular, trapezoidal and U-shaped section, short-throated flumes of rectangular section, and Parshall flumes. The range of weirs includes broad-crested weirs and thin plate weirs, including proportional flow weirs, rectangular notch and V-notch weirs.

The procedure for designing a trapezoidal flume consists of editing the sequence of property pages for the Flume object, as illustrated on (a) - (g), inclusive.

The Main tab (a) is used for flume type selection and setting the design flow range. This is followed in sequence by the channels tab (b), which is used for entry of data relating to the channel into which the flume is inserted. The third tab (c) is the design page for the throat dimensions. When the user clicks the Setup button on this page, ARTS presents the user with a compliant initial design for the flume throat. The user can then edit the throat dimensions, as desired, subject to the constraint of remaining in compliance with flume design criteria. ARTS provides guidance to the user in this respect through its tooltip feature, which displays the permissible value range for the parameter being edited, based on the current values of the remaining parameters, as illustrated below:

The Plan property page (d) is used to specify the throat length and downstream expansion slope. ARTS provides tooltip guide limit ranges for these parameters. The Side property page (e) is used to display water levels across the flume at maximum and minimum flow values. The Calibration property page (f) shows the calibration curve for the flume and the corresponding fitted Head/Discharge equation. The Status property page (g) records data related to the design compliance of the flume and also displays the head loss across the flume at maximum flow.

Weir design is carried out by following a sequence of property pages similar to those illustrated above.