Oxy-Hydrogen Flame for Cutting of Steels

The paper deals with oxy-hydrogen cutting of steel plates. The first part deals with calculation of the combustion efficiency of an oxy-hydrogen flame. A device for supply of a hydrogen-oxygen mixture is described. The main part of the paper is focused on oxy-hydrogen cutting and its advantages. The main conclusions show that the cut surface is flat and very smooth, the heat-affected zone is very narrow, and the cutting speed is relatively high

The Experimental Monitoring of the Water Regime in the Reka River

Reka Reka, s prispevno površino 422 km2 , ponika v Škocjanskih jamah, ki jih je UNESCO leta 1986 proglasil za svetovno dediščino. V sedemdesetih letih je bila Reka ena od najbolj onesnaženih rek v Sloveniji. V času visokih vod leta 1999 in 2000 smo izvedli meritve hitrosti, kalnosti, vrste fizikalnih in kemičnih parametrov ter teste strupenosti. Glavni cilji teh pionirskih meritev so bili preveriti mersko opremo v terenskih pogojih visokih voda, zbrati čimveč podatkov ter primerjati uporabnost opreme.The river Reka, with 422 square kilometres of drainage area sinks into the Škocijan Cave system, which was proclaimed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1986. In the seventies, the Reka river was one of most polluted rivers in Slovenia. During floods in 1999 and 2000, experimental measurements of velocity, water level, suspended sediment transport, chemical parameters and toxicity tests were conducted. The main tasks in the first stage of the investigation: check the equipment in field conditions and test the toxicity of water in particular cross sections. In the paper, the measurements and some discussion of the results and applicability of equipment are presented

Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management

Climate change impact on flood hazard

Climate changes have a high impact on river discharges and therefore on floods. There are a few different methods we can use to predict discharge changes in the future. In this paper we used the complex HBV model for the Vipava River and simple correlation between discharge and precipitation data for the Soča River. The discharge prediction is based on the E-OBS precipitation data for three future time periods (2011–2040, 2041–2070 and 2071–2100). Estimated discharges for those three future periods are presented for both rivers. But a special situation occurs at the confluence where the two rivers with rather different catchments unite, and this requires an additional probability analysis

A European Flood Database: facilitating comprehensive flood research beyond administrative boundaries

The current work addresses one of the key building blocks towards an improved understanding of flood processes and associated changes in flood characteristics and regimes in Europe: the development of a comprehensive, extensive European flood database. The presented work results from ongoing cross-border research collaborations initiated with data collection and joint interpretation in mind. A detailed account of the current state, characteristics and spatial and temporal coverage of the European Flood Database, is presented. At this stage, the hydrological data collection is still growing and consists at this time of annual maximum and daily mean discharge series, from over 7000 hydrometric stations of various data series lengths. Moreover, the database currently comprises data from over 50 different data sources. The time series have been obtained from different national and regional data sources in a collaborative effort of a joint European flood research agreement based on the exchange of data, models and expertise, and from existing international data collections and open source websites. These ongoing efforts are contributing to advancing the understanding of regional flood processes beyond individual country boundaries and to a more coherent flood research in Europe