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Adaptation of stilling basins to higher discharges than those considered for their design implies deep knowledge of the flow developed in these structures. To this end, the hydraulic jump occurring in a typified United States Bureau of Reclamation Type II (USBR II) stilling basin was analyzed using a numerical and experimental modeling approach. A reduced-scale physical model to conduct an experimental campaign was built and a numerical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was prepared to carry out the corresponding simulations. Both models were able to successfully reproduce the case study in terms of hydraulic jump shape, velocity profiles, and pressure distributions. The analysis revealed not only similarities to the flow in classical hydraulic jumps but also the influence of the energy dissipation devices existing in the stilling basin, all in good agreement with bibliographical information, despite some slight differences. Furthermore, the void fraction distribution was analyzed, showing satisfactory performance of the physical model, although the numerical approach presented some limitations to adequately represent the flow aeration mechanisms, which are discussed herein. Overall, the presented modeling approach can be considered as a useful tool to address the analysis of free surface flows occurring in stilling basins.

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The present research develops a systematic application of a selected family of 11 well-known design storms, all of them obtained from the same rainfall data sample. Some of them are fully consistent with the intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves, while others are built according to typical observed patterns in the historical rainfall series. The employed data series consists on a high-resolution rainfall time series in Valencia (Spain), covering the period from 1990 to 2012. The goal of the research is the systematic comparison of these design storms, paying special attention to some relevant quantitative properties, as the maximum rainfall intensity, the total cumulative rainfall depth or the temporal pattern characterising the synthetic storm. For comparison purposes, storm duration was set to 1 hour and return period equal to 25 years in all cases. The comparison is enhanced by using each of the design storms as rainfall input to a calibrated urban hydrology rainfall–runoff model, yielding to a family of hydrographs for a given neighbourhood of the city of Valencia (Spain). The discussion and conclusions derived from the present research refer to both, the comparison between design storms and the comparison of resulting hydrographs after the application of the mentioned rainfall–runoff model. Seven of the tested design storms yielded to similar overall performance, showing negligible differences in practice. Among them, only Average Variability Method (AVM) and Two Parameter Gamma function (G2P) incorporate in their definition a temporal pattern inferred from empirical patterns identified in the historical rainfall data used herein. The remaining four design storms lead to more significant discrepancies attending both to the rainfall itself and to the resulting hydrograph. Such differences are ~8% concerning estimated discharges.