GOUPIL

FRANCE (see also List of Individuals)

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7.11.1843 Paris/F -.. 1919 Paris/F

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Alexandre Goupil graduated from Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées as a civil engineer. He was attached to the French hydrometrical service and thus involved in runoff determination. Goupil's 1883 paper relates to the Seine River basin, one of the four large French catchments. The service had been set up by Eugène Belgrand (1810-1878), the famous engineer known for the concept of drinking water supply to the capital in the 1870s. Goupil's 1884 paper relates to detailed runoff observations for the Epte River in the Seine river basin in which the then available methods are described, together with the method for flood announcement. Goupil stayed all through his career with the French Hydrometrical Service and retired as chief engineer of his Corps.

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Goupil was one of these French engineers who were involved in runoff processes and flood propagation. Until about 1870, these features remained obscured by the relatively complex hydraulic mechanisms that govern unsteady free surface flows. The shallow water equations established by Adhémar Barré de Saint-Venant (1797-1886) in 1871 allowed for the analysis of flood flows. Saint-Venant's paper includes the basic solution of his set of equations for flows in which the friction slope is compensated for by the bottom slope. It was at once evident that the propagation velocity of a flood is composed of the river base flow velocity plus or minus the shallow water celerity. In parallel, as demonstrated by Joseph Boussinesq (1842-1929), typical flood flows have an effect both upand downstream of a reach considered, whereas disturbances in a high-speed flow propagate only in the downstream direction. The loop curve associated with flood flows was first described by Charles Kleitz (1808-1886) in 1877.

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_{Anonymous (1885). A. Goupil. L'Illustration (2186): 48. P}

_{Anonymous (1920). M. Goupil. Bulletin de l'Association des Ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées PCM 17(4/5): 3.}

_{Goupil, A. (1883). Résumé des observations centralisées par le Service hydrométrique du basin de la Seine pendant 1882. Annuaire Société Météorologique de France 31(10): 311-348. Goupil, A. (1884). Note sur l'annonce des crues de l'Epte par les observations de la pluie à}

_{Gournay et à Forges. Résumé des observations centralisées par le Service Hydrométrique du Bassin de la Seine: 41-43.}

_{Goupil, A. (1904). Aérodynamique. Bulletin technologique CNAM 15(2): 745-844.}

_{Goupil, A. (1909). Recherches et observations récentes sur le bélier hydraulique. Annales des Ponts et Chaussées 79(1): 121-138.}