Introduction

Introduction

DRAINS provides procedures recommended by Australian Rainfall and Runoff 2019, handling ensembles of design storms and performing designs and simulations based on upper median or upper mean outcomes.  Check the Recently-added features for details.

This Help system shows you how to understand and apply DRAINS, which designs urban stormwater drainage systems and analyses their behaviour during storm events.  DRAINS describes piped drainage networks, detention basins, open channels, and rural and urban catchments.  You can apply five different kinds of hydrological model, various design procedures and Lite or Full unsteady hydraulic models.  

These Help topics apply both to DRAINS, DRAINS Lite and to the DRAINS Viewer, and will evolve with each new release of DRAINS.  For information on how to install and apply the Viewer, please go here.

Information on the capabilities of DRAINS and how to use it are given in the following links:
  1. Overview of DRAINS
  2. Recently-added features
  3. Setting up ARR 2019 rainfall and design procedures
  4. ARR 2019 IL-CL Hydrological model used in DRAINS
  5. How to apply DRAINS
  6. Parts of DRAINS
  7. Examples
  8. Methods used in DRAINS
  9. Common Mistakes and Troubleshooting
For quick reference, you can use the index to the left, entering a keyword, or searching for the topic that you require.
If this Help window is too small to view some illustrations, you can enlarge it to see the complete topic.

    • Related Articles

    • The Lite and Full Unsteady Hydraulic Models

      (a) Introduction Introduced in 2010, the Standard and Premium hydraulic model procedures superseded the Basic hydraulic model that had been applied in DRAINS since its first release. In 2020 the Standard hydraulic model was renamed to Lite hydraulic ...

    • Running individual storms with ARR data

      As well as running DRAINS models with ARR storm ensembles, models can be run with selected storms from these ensembles. This can be done in two ways. The first way allows you to run trial and error calculations easily based on the median or mean ...

    • Methods used in DRAINS

      (a) Introduction DRAINS offers a new design model for pipe systems, detention basins and other facilities that runs with ARR 2019 sets or 'ensembles' of ten design storms for a selected number of storm durations. This detailed procedure is that same ...

    • Basic hydraulic model (obsolete)

      (a) Introduction This model, now obsolete, was the original hydraulic calculation procedure applied to pipe and open channel systems in DRAINS. In December 2010, this method was superseded by the Lite & Full Unsteady hydraulic models. It has been ...