Regulating Structure

(also straightening structure), a hydroengineering installation that regulates a river channel. Regulating structures include heavy, or capital, structures, which often are part of a master plan for regulating channels and are designed for long-term use, and light structures, which are used periodically, primarily on small and medium rivers.

Heavy regulating structures, for example, dikes, levees, barrages, and jetties, must resist undermining and the destructive action of water and ice and be sufficiently flexible to adapt to the deformations of the base without a loss of stability. Talus, revetments, fascines, pilings, and cribs are used to erect heavy regulating structures. Light regulating structures include brushwood wattles and screens, devices that guide and deflect the flow (for example, Potapov’s panels), branching barriers, and earthworks without heavy covers.

Regulating structures are longitudinal, transverse, or combined, depending on their location with respect to the channel. Depending on their effect on the flow, regulating structures are either solid, deflecting and guiding all the water that flows against them, or lattice-like, permitting part of the flow to pass through them and effecting the redistribution of the discharges, velocities, and accumulations over the cross section of a channel.