Hubert Chanson


Hubert Chanson is a professional engineer and academic in hydraulic engineering and environmental fluid mechanics. Since 1990 he has worked at the University of Queensland.

Research

Chanson completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in 1988.
Chanson is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, where he has been since 1990, having previously enjoyed an industrial career for six years. His main field of expertise is environmental fluid mechanics and hydraulic engineering, both in terms of theoretical fundamentals, physical and numerical modelling. He leads a group of five to ten researchers, largely targeting flows around hydraulic structures, two-phase free-surface flows, turbulence in steady and unsteady open channel flows, using computation, lab-scale experiments, field work and analysis. He serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of Multiphase Flow, Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, and Environmental Fluid Mechanics, the latter of which he is currently a senior editor.
Chanson authored several books among which: Hydraulic Design of Stepped Cascades, Channels, Weirs and Spillways, Air Bubble Entrainment in Free-Surface Turbulent Shear Flows, The Hydraulics of Open Channel Flow: An Introduction, The Hydraulics of Stepped Chutes and Spillways, Environmental Hydraulics of Open Channel Flows, Tidal Bores, Aegir, Eagre, Mascaret, Pororoca: Theory and Observations and Applied Hydrodynamics: An Introduction. He co-authored the books Fish Swimming in Turbulent Waters and Fluid Mechanics for Ecologists, and he edited several other books. The textbook The Hydraulics of Open Channel Flow: An Introduction has been translated into Chinese and Spanish and the second edition appeared in 2004. He has further published over 1,200 peer-reviewed papers and his work was cited over 7,500 times to 25,000 times. His h-index is 46, 51 and 79 in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar respectively.
He witnessed the 2010–11 Queensland floods and he documented thoroughly some observations in Central, Southern and South-East Queensland.

Awards

The International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research presented Chanson with the 13th Arthur Ippen Award for outstanding achievements in hydraulic engineering.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, Environmental and Water Resources Institute presented him with the award for the best practice paper in the ASCE Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, the 2018 Honorable Mention Paper Award for "Minimum Specific Energy and Transcritical Flow in Unsteady Open-Channel Flow" by Castro-Orgaz and Chanson in the ASCE Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering and both 2020 and 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Award of the Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering.
The Institution of Civil Engineers, UK presented him the 2018 Baker Medal.
In 1999 he was awarded a Doctor of Engineering from the University of Queensland for his outstanding research achievements in gas-liquid bubbly flows.
In 2018, he was inducted a Fellow of the Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society.
Hubert Chanson is ranked among the 150 most cited researchers in civil engineering in Shanghai's Global Ranking of Academics.

Selected works

  • Chanson, Hubert, and Leng, Xinqian. Fish Swimming in Turbulent Waters. Hydraulics Guidelines to assist Upstream Fish Passage in Box Culverts. CRC Press, 2021.
  • Chanson, Hubert. Applied Hydrodynamics: An Introduction. CRC Press, 2014.
  • Chanson, Hubert. "Hydraulics of Aerated Flows: Qui Pro Quo?" Journal of Hydraulic Research, Invited Vision paper, 51, No. 3 : 223-243
  • Chanson, Hubert. Environmental hydraulics for open channel flows. 2nd Edition. Elsevier, 2004.
  • Chanson, Hubert. Hydraulics of open channel flow: an Introduction. Elsevier, 2004.
  • Chanson, Hubert. Air bubble entrainment in free-surface turbulent shear flows. Elsevier, 1996.
  • Chanson, Hubert. "Hydraulics of skimming flows over stepped channels and spillways." Journal of Hydraulic Research 32, no. 3 : 445–460.