SHVARTS

RUSSIA (see also List of Individuals)

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.6.1900/RU - 9.6.1958 Leningrad/RU

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Alexandr Izrailevich Shvarts graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineering in 1925. In 1927 he started at the Melioration Institute of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute then headed by Nikolai Nikolaevich Pavlovsky (1884-1937), the later VNIIG. He remained all through his career in Leningrad, where he passed away at an age of 58.

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Shvarts worked mainly in open channel hydraulics. One of the first papers related to backwater curves, while other research investigated spillway flows. The currently used ogee crest profile for which the bottom pressure is equal to the atmospheric pressure under design discharge was by then not yet developed. Based on model observations, a variety of crest shapes were investigated that finally resulted in the standard crest profile currently employed in hydraulic engineering. Shvarts also investigated the velocity distribution of orifice outflows as was first systematically analyzed by Henry Bazin (1829-1917). In the 1940s his research attention turned to river engineering where he was interested in questions relating to bridge design. A particular work was devoted to bridge pier and bridge abutment scour, currently a prime research topic in hydraulic engineering. Shvarts presented a solution to the scour problem by accounting for the complete river bed deformation. In the 1950s he was interested in air entrainment as occur in hydraulic structures. As dams became higher, spillways produce water flows of which the velocity was so large that air entrainment resulted. The upper spillway flow portion is referred to as blackwater flow because the turbulent boundary layer has not yet reached the free surface. Downstream from the point of air inception, the flow turns almost immediately white. Due to the presence of air in the two-phase flow, more cross-sectional area is required. These questions were of interest from the early 1950s mainly in the Soviet Union and in the USA. Shvarts was one of the first to investigate these issues that are even currently not completely solved.

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_{Anonymous (1958). A.I. Schwarts. Izvestiya VNIIG 61: 191-192. P}

_{Melua, A.I. (2001). Shvarts, Aleksandr Izrailevich. Power engineering specialists of Russia:}

_{414. VNIIG: Saint Petersburg (in Russian).}

_{Shvarts, A.I. (1958). Izvestiya VNIIG 61: 31-42 (in Russian).}

_{Voinovich, P.A., Shvarts, A.I. (1946). Uniform flow of aerated streams. Izvestiya VNIIG 31: 41-54 (in Russian, with English Summary).}

_{Voinovich, P.A., Kravzov, V.I., Preobrazhensky, I.A., Shvarts, A.I. (1958). Upstream guiding works of sediment retain structures. Izvestiya VNIIG 61: 31-59 (in Russian).}