Abstract This paper presents an investigation into the hydraulics of regular ogee-profile spillways. The free-surfaces of the fluid for several flow heads as measured in the hydraulics laboratory are used as benchmarks. The finite element computational fluid dynamics software, ADINA, was used to predict the free surface over an ogee spillway and thus model the flow field. Since the actual flow is turbulent the k–e flow model was used. For the cases considered in this paper, ADINA predicted reasonable free surface results that are consistent with general flow characteristics over spillways. The results are also in close agreement with measured free-surface profiles over the entire length of the spillway.