RESUMO
Stepped fishways are the main alternative to allow fish migration in river obstacles. Their design is a multidisciplinary process, where civil engineering meets biology. This can bias the fishway design towards one discipline, which may cause low efficiencies or inadequate solutions. Likewise, it is often challenging to incorporate new discoveries into well-established design principles. To solve these problems, we have developed a novel tool named "Escalas". Escalas is a multipurpose platform for the assisted design, 1D simulation, assessment, and correction of stepped fishways. Escalas architecture allows fishway assessment during different hydraulic scenarios in the river (i.e., different water levels and discharges in the river), automatic dimensioning considering fish's physical needs, the study of any type of stepped fishway, to test solutions for malfunctioning or to assess fishway retrofitting. This is achieved by a modular variable definition during fishway design or definition, which allows multiple combinations of connections within and/or between cross-walls and independent discharge equation definition. This work aims to introduce Escalas to the research and engineering community, describe its algorithms, and show and validate its performance by its use in real and practical cases. Among others, results demonstrate how the tool can reproduce uniform and non-uniform performances on stepped fishways and allows fishway retrofitting to make hydraulic conditions compatible with fish usage during different river scenarios. Therefore, this work represents a step forward in the fishway engineering discipline by applying methods of engineering informatics and providing a technical and scientific base to make engineering decision-making more reliable and accessible as well as to incorporate new advances in fishway research into the engineering design process.
RESUMO
En la vida de Jerónimo de Ayanz hay un lapso de tiempo, desde noviembre de 1611 hasta su muerte, en marzo de 1613, del que no disponíamos de ninguna fuente documental. Recientemente, un impreso adquirido por la Biblioteca Nacional de España, y que hemos fechado en 1612, revela que el técnico estuvo activo hasta sus últimos días y nos muestra una nueva faceta suya: la experimentación científica. Este documento incluye una carta impresa dirigida al príncipe Emanuel Filiberto de Saboya. En la misiva, Ayanz presenta al príncipe un capítulo de un libro científico desconocido que estaba escribiendo en el que, a través de la experimentación, trata asuntos como la compulsión de los elementos, la existencia del vacío, el movimiento perpetuo, la esfera ígnea o la caída de los cuerpos. Nuestro objetivo es presentar este valioso documento y exponer los experimentos e innovadoras teorías científicas que Ayanz plantea (AU)
Recently, a printed document of Jerónimo de Ayanz, acquired by the Biblioteca Nacional de España (the National Library of Spain), has revealed that this inventor was active until the very last days of his life and shows his interest in technology, research and science. The document, addressed to the Prince Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, is one chapter of a book, of which no copies are known, that Ayanz had prepared in 1612 and that he probably wanted to publish with the support of the Prince. In this paper we present and comment this important text, where the author discusses central scientific subjects of his time such as the compulsory movement of the elements, the existence of vacuum, the possibility of perpetual motion, the sphere of fire and falling bodies (AU)
