LAUFFER

AUSTRIA (see also List of Individuals)

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6.7.1909 Pola/SI - 4.10.2007 Innsbruck/A

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Harald Lauffer was born in Istria at the Adriatic Sea, formerly a region of the Austrian Empire; he graduated as a civil engineer from the Technical University of Graz and stayed there for another four years as an assistant of the institute of hydraulics. In 1938, Hermann Grengg (1891-1978) asked him for collaboration in the design of the Tauern dam scheme, one of the large hydropower works of Austria. Lauffer joined Tiroler Wasserkraftwerke TIWAG at Innsbruck in 1948, where he was a director since 1959 until retirement in 1978. He was awarded the honorary degree of doctor of sciences from TU Graz in 1973, and he presided over the Austrian National Committee for Large Dams.

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Lauffer's interest in hydraulics grew mainly in the first part of his professional career. An early paper involved undular hydraulic jumps previously considered by Henry Bazin (1829-1917) and Joseph Boussinesq (1842-1929), and later also by Josef Einwachter (1899-1955). Shortly later, Lauffer devised a theory on flows with concentrically curved streamlines such as occur on ski jump spillways and on round–crested weir crests. The results were then applied to siphon spillways with a large tailwater slope. He also added a significant work on the effect of a large bottom slope on the main flow parameters such as flow depth, length of the normal to the invert, and pressure head, which are all identical for horizontal flows. A modified energy equation was presented and the minimum energy head was associated with maximum discharge conditions, thus generalizing the findings of Jean-Baptiste Bélanger (1790-1874) and initiating the researches of Charles Jaeger (1901-1989).

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_{Anonymous (1979). Wechsel im TIWAG-Vorstand. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Elektrizitätswirtschaft 32: 276.}

_{Fenz, R. (1979). Harald Lauffer. Österreichische Wasserwirtschaft 21(5/6): 93-94. P}

_{Lauffer, H. (1935). Wassersprung bei kleinen Sprunghöhen. Wasserwirtschaft und Technik}

_{29(11/12): 137-140.}

_{Lauffer, H. (1935). Druck, Energie und Fliesszustand in Gerinnen mit grossem Gefälle. Wasserkraft und Wasserwirtschaft 30(7): 78-82.}

_{Lauffer, H. (1936). Strömung in Kanälen mit gekrümmter Sohle. Wasserkraft und Wasserwirtschaft 31(19): 245-249; 31(20): 260-264.}

_{Lauffer, H. (1936). Grenzleistung von Heberüberfällen mit grossem Gefälle. Bautechnik}

_{14(30): 433-436.}