Results of a horizontally mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler

Shallow, narrow and busy channels do not easily allow conventional current measurements in real time. The goal is to investigate the possibility of using data of a horizontally mounted ADCP for measuring flow velocity and direction in a river or channel. Measurements were performed during one month with a horizontally mounted ADCP in a 400 m wide waterway in the Port of Rotterdam. Two horizontal acoustic beams point from one shore to the other. The authors compare the horizontal ADCP data with the data of a vessel-mounted ADCP. It has been shown that the horizontal ADCP averages flow over a certain part of the water column. The authors propose a method to compute river flow averaged over the total cross section from horizontal ADCP data. The horizontal ADCP results compare well with vessel mounted ADCP data for two tidal cycles.