Open-channel hydraulics are described by hyperbolic equations, derived from laws of conservation of mass and momentum, called Saint-Venant equations. In conjunction with hydraulic structure equations these are used to represent the dynamic behavior of water flowing in rivers, irrigation canals, and sewers.

Building on a detailed analysis of open-channel flow modeling, this monograph constructs control design methodologies based on a frequency domain approach. In practice, many open-channel systems are controlled with classical input-output controllers that are usually poorly tuned. The approach of this book, fashioning pragmatic engineering solutions for the control of open channels is given rigorous mathematical justification. Once the control objectives are clarified, a generic control design method is proposed, first for a canal pool, and then for a whole canal. The methods developed in the book have been validated on several canals of various dimensions up to a large scale irrigation canal.

Xavier Litrico is IGREF researcher at Cemagref, a public research center for environmental and agricultural applied research, and Vincent Fromion is 'directeur de recherches' at INRA, a public research center for agricultural research. Both authors have been collaborating on this subject for several years. Xavier Litrico holds a Ph.D. in Water Sciences and an HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in Automatic Control Engineering, and Vincent Fromion holds a Ph.D. and an HDR in Automatic Control Engineering. They have co-authored 10 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals (both in automatic control and open channel hydraulics) and 15 papers in international conferences on this area of research.