2D-HEC-RAS Modeling of Flood Wave Propagation in a Semi-Arid Area Due to Dam Overtopping Failure

Dam overtopping failure and the resulting floods are hazardous events that highly impact the inundated areas and are less predictable. The simulation of the dam breach failure and the flood wave propagation is necessary for assessing flood hazards to provide precautions. In the present study, a two-dimensional HEC-RAS model was used to simulate the flood wave resulting from the hypothetical failure of Al-Udhaim Dam on Al-Udhaim River, Iraq, and the propagation of the resulting dam-break wave along 100 km downstream the dam site for the overtopping scenario. The main objective is to analyze the propagation of the flood wave so that the failure risk on dam downstream areas can be assessed and emergency plans may be provided. The methodology consisted of two sub-models: the first is the dam breach failure model for deriving the breach hydrograph, and the second is the hydrodynamic model for propagating the flood wave downstream of the dam. The breach hydrograph is used as an upstream boundary condition to derive the flood impact in the downstream reach of Al- Udhaim River. The flood inundation maps were visualized in RAS-Mapper in terms of water surface elevation, water depth, flow velocity, and flood arrival time. The maximum recorded values were: 105 m (a.m.s.l.), 18 m, 5.5 m/s, and, respectively. The flow velocity decreased from upstream to downstream of the terrain, which means less risk of erosion in the far reaches downstream of the study area. The inundation maps indicated that the water depth and flow velocity were categorized as Catastrophic limits on the terrain's area. The results offer a way to predict flood extent and showed that the impact of a potential dam break at Al-Udhiam Dam will be serious, therefore, suitable management is needed to overcome this risk. Moreover, the maps produced by this study are useful for developing plans for sustainable flood management. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091739 Full Text: PDF

Analysis of Dam Overtopping Failure Risks Caused by Landslide-Induced Surges Considering Spatial Variability of Material Parameters

Many of the existing reservoir dams are constructed in alpine and gorge regions, where the topography and geological conditions are complicated, bank slopes are steep, and landslides have a high potential to occur. Surges triggered by landslides in the reservoir are one of the major causes of dam overtopping failures. Many factors affect the slope stability of reservoir banks and the height of surges triggered by landslides, such as spatial variability of material properties, speed of landslides, etc. To reasonably evaluate dam overtopping risk caused by landslide-induced surges is a key technology in engineering that is urgent to be solved. Therefore, a novel risk analysis method for overtopping failures caused by waves triggered by landslides induced by bank instability considering the spatial variability of material parameters is proposed in this study. Based on the random field theory, the simulation method for the spatial variability of material parameters is proposed, and the most dangerous slip surface of the reservoir bank slope is determined with the minimum value of the safety factors. The proxy risk analysis models for both the slope instability and dam overtopping are constructed with the consideration of spatial variability of material parameters, and then the dam overtopping failure risk caused by landslide-induced surges is calculated using the Monte-Carlo sampling. The proposed models are applied to a practical engineering project. Results show that the spatial variability of material properties significantly affects the instability risk of slopes, without considering which the risks of slope instability and dam overtopping may be overestimated. This study gives a more reasonable and realistic risk assessment of dam overtopping failures, which can provide technical support for the safety evaluation and risk control of reservoir dams.

Modeling Flood Peak Discharge Caused by Overtopping Failure of a Landslide Dam

Overtopping failure often occurs in landslide dams, resulting in the formation of strong destructive floods. As an important hydraulic parameter to describe floods, the peak discharge often determines the downstream disaster degree. Based on 67 groups of landslide dam overtopping failure cases all over the world, this paper constructs the calculation model for peak discharge of landslide dam failure. The model considers the influence of dam erodibility, breach shape, dam shape and reservoir capacity on the peak discharge. Finally, the model is compared with the existing models. The results show that the new model has a higher accuracy than the existing models and the simulation accuracy of the two outburst peak discharges of Baige dammed lake in Jinsha River (10 October 2018 and 3 November 2018) is higher (the relative error is 0.73% and 6.68%, respectively), because the model in this study considers more parameters (the breach shape, the landslide dam erodibility) than the existing models. The research results can provide an important reference for formulating accurate and effective disaster prevention and mitigation measures for such disasters.

Can a dam type of an alpine lake be derived from lake geometry? A negative result

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) represent one of the most serious hazard and risk in deglaciating high mountain regions worldwide and the need for GLOF hazard and risk assessment is apparent. As a consequence, numerous region- and nation-wide GLOF assessment studies have been published recently. These studies cover large areas and consider hundreds to thousands of lakes, prioritizing the hazard posed by them. Clearly, certain simplification is required for executing such studies, often resulting in neglecting qualitative characteristics which would need manual assignment. Different lake dam types (e.g., bedrock-dammed, moraine-dammed) are often not distinguished, despite they control GLOF mechanism (dam overtopping/dam breach) and thus GLOF magnitude. In this study, we explore the potential of easily measurable quantitative characteristics and four ratios to approximate the lake dam type. Our dataset of 851 lakes of the Cordillera Blanca suggests that while variances and means of these characteristics of individual lake types differ significantly (F-test, t-test), value distribution of different geometrical properties can’t be used for the originally proposed purpose along the spectra. The only promising results are obtained for extreme values (selected bins) of the ratios. For instance, the low width to length ratio indicates likely moraine-dammed lake while the high value of ratio indicating round-shape of the lake indicates increased likelihood of bedrock-dammed lake. Overall, we report a negative result of our experiment since there are negligible differences of relative frequencies in most of the bins along the spectra.

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru: Historic Events and Current Susceptibility

The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru and to evaluate the susceptibility of lakes to the generation of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Using high-resolution satellite images, we undertook qualitative and quantitative analysis of lake type, characteristics and distribution, and placed our findings within the context of existing Peru-wide lake inventories. We also mapped and analyzed past GLOFs, revealing a total of 10 GLOFs and 4 ambiguous events, most of which have not been reported before. We found that past GLOFs usually occurred as a result of moraine dam breach during the proglacial stage of lake evolution. Further, we used our lake inventory to evaluate GLOF susceptibility of all lakes larger than 20,000 m2. Of 46 evaluated lakes, only two lakes (Lake Tsacra and Lake W014) are currently susceptible to generating a GLOF, which would most likely be through dam overtopping resulting from a flood originating in smaller lakes located upstream. The future perspectives of lake evolution and implications for GLOF hazard management are discussed in light of the post-Little Ice Age glacier ice loss as well as in the context of extensive related research undertaken in the nearby Cordillera Blanca.

Overtopping Risk Analysis of Earth Dams considering Effects of Failure Duration of Release Structures

For modern high earth dams, sufficient safety margin is considered in the designs of flood discharge capacity and dam crest elevation to prevent flood overtopping. However, for high earth dams which may induce catastrophic consequences, during their long operational period, extremely hazardous scenarios which could occur and threaten dam safety need to be considered. For the earth dams located in areas with intensive seismicity, there is a possible scenario that the release structures fail due to seismic landslides and gate failures caused by a severe earthquake when the flood begins to enter the reservoir. Thus, it is desirable to investigate the influence of failure duration of release structures on dam overtopping risk. Based on the Bayesian network, a methodology for overtopping risk analysis of earth dams considering effects of failure duration of release structures is proposed. The overtopping risk of the PBG earth-rockfill dam was analyzed to illustrate the methodology. The critical release structures which dominate the dam overtopping risk are identified. The dam overtopping risk is most sensitive to the failure duration of the spillway. The tolerable failure duration of the spillway is approximately 3 days, and when the failure duration of the spillway reaches 4 days, the dam overtopping risk drastically rises to an unacceptable level. The case study suggests that the proposed methodology could be helpful to analyze the influences of possible failure durations of release structures on dam overtopping risk and could facilitate preparation for emergency plans.