Hydraulic engineering and roman aqueducts: modern perspectives

The Roman engineering heritage encompasses a number of magnificent structures including bridges, roads, dams and aqueducts, with many still standing (Fig. 1 to 4). Among these, the aqueducts constitute a fine example of water resource engineering and many aqueduct sections are still in use, in Tunisia, Spain and France for example. Surprisingly, relatively little is known on their engineering design nor the hydraulic knowledge of Roman engineers (Hodge 1992, Fabre et al. 2000). Some scholars suggested that the basic principles of fluid mechanics were unknown from the Romans (Garbrecht 1987, Hodge 1992,2002), but recent arguments showed the contrary (Chanson 2000,2002,2010).

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