7. Conclusion

Bergeron's method has the advantage of simplicity and the merit of helping to understand the physical phenomenon. The results obtained with Bergeron agree perfectly well with those of the characteristics method when energy degradations are neglected.

In the study of complex hydraulic systems, graphical construction quickly becomes very complicated. This is one of the reasons why this graphical method was transposed directly onto the computer, as soon as calculators were developed. The "Bélier" software package is a pure illustration of this.

The characteristics method allows us to determine results that would be extremely complicated to obtain with the Bergeron method.

When it comes to using the characteristics method, there are some very powerful software packages that are well suited to the study of unsteady phenomena...