BELLASIS

UNITED KINGDOM (see also List of Individuals)

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19.1.1855 Ulverstone/UK - 15.10.1945 Guildford/UK

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Edward Skeleton Bellasis graduated in 1878 as a civil engineer from Roorkee Engineering College, India. He was engaged as a superintending engineer in the Irrigation Branch of the Indian Public Works Department until around 1900 when moving to the United Kingdom. Few is known on his biography. Bellasis was from 1880 an Associate Member and from 1897 a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His career was marked by his stay in India and closeness to engineering practice.

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Bellasis first work was a critique of the Roorkee hydraulic experiments which were conducted by Allan Cunninham (1842-1928) on the Ganges Canal between 1874 and 1879. Bellasis spent thirty-five years in the service of the Punjab Irrigation Branch and wrote several works there on hydraulics. He was for instance also involved in improvement works of the Hooghly River close to Calcutta in Bengal. After having returned from India to Europe, he presented his successful Hydraulics book, with a basic hydraulic approach to questions in irrigation and design procedures for open channel flow. This book is accompanied with a large number of tables, to facilitate computations. In the 1920s, he was one of the first to address questions of river siltation and scour by high speed flows in the fluvial environment. The Punjab Irrigation Service was indeed one of the founding institutions to what later led to the regime theory, with known representatives of the caliber of Robert Greig Kennedy (1851-1920) or Gerald Lacey (1887-1979).

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_{Bellasis, E.S. (1886). A paper on the Roorkee hydraulic experiments. Journal of the Indian Society of Engineers: 1-43.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1895). Uniform flow in open channels. Engineering 62: 518-519; 62: 632-633;}

_{63: 21.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1905). Correspondence on The River Hooghly. Minutes Institution of Civil Engineers 160(2): 148-210.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1911). Hydraulics with working tables. Rivingtons: London.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1912). Punjab rivers and works. A description of the shifting rivers of the Punjab plains and of works on them: Inundation canals, flood embankment and river training works, with the principles for designing and working them. Spon: London.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1924). River and canal engineering. Spon: London.}

_{Bellasis, E.S. (1927). Correspondence on The theory of silt and scour. Minutes Proc. Institution of Civil Engineers 223(1): 282-284.}

_{Bellasis, P. (2003). Edward Skeleton Bellasis. Personal communication. P}