Daryl B. Simons

Daryl B. Simons (1918-2005) was a professor of civil engineering at Colorado State University with research interests in sediment transport, hydrology, hydraulic engineering, river mechanics and hydraulic modelling. He received his Masters in civil engineering from Utah State University in 1948 and decided to pursue doctoral studies at CSU under the direction of Maurice Albertson, but they were interrupted by World War II. In 1957, upon the completion of his dissertation on stable channel design, Simons joined the USGS as project chief at the Fort Collins branch, known for its extensive laboratory and field experiments on sediment transport. He left the USGS in 1963 when he was offered professorship in civil engineering at CSU, where he offered a number of innovative and popular courses, such as one on “Analysis of Watershed and River Systems” in the late 1970s. He was also instrumental in the creation of a state-of-the-art Engineering Research Center, with support from the USGS, at CSU’s Foothills Campus. 

Simons’s professional career also includes significant work as a consultant on domestic and international projects. He worked with the World Bank in the late 1950s to design link canals for redistributing the Indus River waters between Pakistan and India, as well as in Bangladesh (then, East Pakistan) to design levees for flood control and irrigation. Beyond South Asia, he also worked in Egypt to study the potential degradation of the Nile River after the construction of the High Aswan Dam in 1965. At home, he consulted for the Federal Highways Administration on the design and construction of hydraulic structures associated with highways.

Publications

ALBERTSON, Maurice L., James R. BARTON, and Daryl B. SIMONS. “Fluid Mechanics for Engineers.” Prentice-Hall, 1968.
Simons, Li. “Engineering Analysis of Fluvial Systems.” SLA, 1982.
Richardson, Everett V., Daryl B. Simons, and Pierre Y. Julien. Highways in the River Environment: Participant Notebook. Federal Highway Administration, 1990.
Richardson, Everett V., Daryl B. Simons, and Peter Frederick Lagasse. “River Engineering for Highway Encroachments: Highways in the River Environment.” United States. Federal Highway Administration, 2001.
Simons, Daryl B., and Fuat Sentürk. “Sediment Transport Technology.” Water Resources Publications Fort Collins, Colorado, 1976.