Thanks guys, and I think that would probably work. The combination of the two ideas. But, we would have needed a much larger pump with an open ended channel.
However, we actually went with a bottom mounted design now because we are deploying in a tidal basin and our generator units will be...
I need to simulate the flow of a river, to do small scale hydrodynamics testing on a partially submerged water wheel / paddle wheel design. The typical water tunnel setup will not work, because we are interested in the flow near the surface. The water wheel is half in the water, and half out...