INTRODUCTION

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The Institute of Water Conservancy and Hydroelectric Power Research (IWHR) was established in 1958. During the past thirty years, the Institute has been responsible for the investigation of many problems of vital importance and crucial technicality, arising from water conservancy and hydropower development. Has been focused on the following research activities, namely, the development and utilization of water resources, the engineering measures to ensure high agricultural yield, river and reservoir sedimentation problems, hydraulics for high-dams, environmental problems in water resources and hydropower engineering high dam structures and new construction materials, foundation and geotechnical problems of major hydro-projects, blasting and aseismatic engineering. large-sized water turbines and pumps, automation of hydropower plants as well as automation and system engineering of hydrological and meteorological information and forecasting. The Institute, acting as a comprehensive and multi-purpose research organization, has played an important role in hydro-science and hydraulic engineering.
 
The Institute is composed of 12 research departments, a compute center, a water quality research center and an instrumentation workshop. It boasts of a staff of 1800, among them 211 are senior engineers, and 379 are engineers. The Institute is also the seat of the International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation.
Thirty two research laboratories, either comprehensive of various specialties have been built and well equipped. The total floor area for laboratories is about 31,000m2 and outdoor paved ground is around 14,500m2. An affiliated experimental hydropower station has an installed capacity of 1300kw. Each laboratory has been provided with relevant testing facilities and measuring instrumentation. The Institute has had 440 items of principal facilities and instruments, most of which are locally designed and manufactured whereas some of which are imported from abroad. Highlights worth mentioning are the high accuracy universal test stand for turbine and pump models in the laboratory of hydraulic machinery; the high speed water tunnel and large size vacuum tank for cavitation research in the hydrodynamic laboratory for high velocity flow research; the large-scale high-performance triaxial vibration actuating system, having six degrees of freedom and broad range of frequency, installed in the structure vibration laboratory; the automatic closed loop electro-hydraulic servo-controlled rock mechanics testing machine in the geotechnical engineering laboratory; the large-sized high pressure triaxial testing machine in the soil mechanics laboratory; and the hydraulic turbine governor dynamic emulation system in the hydraulic turbine governor dynamic emulation laboratory.
 
All these facilities are of considerable scale, having some peculiarities, thus providing sound and indispensable physical background to address specific problems of diverse disciplines.
 
Recently, in order to fully utilize the potential capability of the existing laboratories and facilities, the Institute has made them open to the public, thereby carrying out international cooperations in full swing and widening the scope of research activities. Now, the Institute has already started conducting experimental research on some engineering problems, such as cooling water for thermal and nuclear power plants, earthquake and aseismatic engineering for industrial and civil structures, static and dynamic behavious of fly-ash dams. Furthermore, assignments of experimental research from abroad have been accepted and international cooperation are being undertaken in full blast, such as joint research program on large -sized water turbines are being conducted with Canada and Japan respectively; A bilateral cooperation on hydroelasticity problem of the interaction between arch dam, its foundation and reservoir water during earthquakes has been proceeding smoothly with the State University of California, U.S.A. International technical cooperation of software development for microcomputers have been conducted with Hitachi, Japan. Training service is also carried out in cooperation with IBM, U.S.A. for Chinese and other users.
 
Since scientific research has to interface with economic development as its basic policy, it is the Institute's great pleasure to provide better service to prospective clients both domestic and abroad in the fields of water resources, hydropower, thermal power nuclear power research as other relevant aspects.