Throughout the development of DRAINS, various procedures have been applied to handle pressure changes at pits when flows are part-full. This has been difficult because there is little literature or guidance on this subject.
In the Lite and Full Unsteady hydraulic models that are now applied in DRAINS, the part-full flow ku factor is assumed to be the same as the specified full-pipe flow ku factor. This is probably conservative, but helps avoid unstable changes of HGL as pipe systems change from part-full to full-pipe flow and other oscillations occur.