ABSTRACT
The Pont du Garde aqueduct, built during ad 40–60 under the reign of Claudius, is composed of many individual hydraulic engineering components that worked collectively to deliver water to the Roman city of Nemausus now the present-day city of Nimes in southern France. The innovative castellum design devised by Roman engineers to accomplish this end and gives a penetrating look into Roman hydraulic engineering practice. The early writings of Vitruvius and Frontinus on Roman hydraulic engineering practice are replete with pre-scientific notations of hydraulic phenomena related to flow velocity, flow rates, time and hydrostatic pressure that were used for flow measurement. Pipeline designs that sustain flows close to partial critical flow over long distances would largely eliminate flow stability concerns from hydraulic jump creation as only a small water contact area with the interior pipeline wall exists under partial flow conditions thus lowering flow resistance effects.
