摘要:Hydraulic radius is an important parameter in hydraulic calculation. It is often deemed that hydraulic radius can be replaced by the cross-sectional average water depth when the width to depth ratio (B/H) is greater than a certain value in traditional. Based on the various artificial cross-section and natural ones, value-taking errors of hydraulic radius are studied in this paper. The results show that it is feasible to adopt the average water depth as the hydraulic radius whenB/Hof rectangular section is larger than 40 orB/Hof isosceles triangular section is larger than 12. But for natural river,B/His different when water level changes and there is no single-valued corresponding relationship between relative error andB/H. Therefore, we advise that hydraulic radius could not be replaced by other variables in hydraulic calculation of natural rivers.