Puncture (hydraulic engineering)
A breakthrough refers to a technique used in river engineering to straighten a meandering river by shortening river curves.
Depending on whether one, two or more river loops or serpentines are cut, one speaks of a single, double or multiple or compound piercing. The new river bed can be excavated as a full cross-section and the last dam pierced. Alternatively, only a partial cross-section than Leitgraben (called is Künette ) is applied and by the introduction of or diversion of the flow of the further deepening the flow through runoff left to itself. To do this, either part or all of the water is diverted first.
A natural process of puncturing occurs when two river bends meet around a mountain . Again, it comes in the wake of silting of Altarmes . By shortening the route, there is an increase in the relative gradient . As a result, the river bed deepens and the groundwater level drops.
The most famous punctures were made during the straightening of the Oder from 1736 to 1788 under Frederick the Great (the Oder Canal , with a length of around 21 km, was for a long time the largest river penetration in the world) and during the straightening of the Rhine from 1817 to 1876 by the Baden engineer Johann Gottfried Tulla and his Successors carried out. Further examples are the Danube breakthrough near Vienna (completed in 1875) and the Elbe breakthrough near Hamburg, which created the Kaltehofe island in 1879 . Another impressive breakthrough can be found in southern Hesse near the Kühkopf (Rhine) .
literature
- Horst Johannes Tümmers: The Rhine. A European river and its history . 2nd revised and updated edition. Verlag CH Beck, Beck, 1999, ISBN 3-406-44823-2 .
- Gotthilf Hagen : Handbook of hydraulic engineering . 2nd increased edition. Publishing house Gebrüder Bornträger, Königsberg 1853.