Papers
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If there is a paper you require prior to 2007 that has not been uploaded please contact the secretariat [email protected]
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Papers
2015 – Improved Rare Design Rainfalls for Australia
Learn moreJ.H. Green; C. Beesley; C. The and S. Podger
Rare design rainfalls for probabilities less frequent than 1% Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP) are an essential part of spillway adequacy assessment as they enable more accurate definition of the design rainfall and flood frequency curves between the 1% AEP and Probable Maximum events.
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Estimates for rare design rainfalls were previously derived using the CRC-FORGE method which was developed in the 1990s. However, as the method was applied on a state-by-state basis, there are variations in the approach adopted for each region. Differences in the cut-off period for data, the amount of quality controlling of the data undertaken, the base used for the 2% AEP estimates, gridding settings and smoothing processes have created inconsistencies which are particularly apparent in overlapping state border areas.
The Bureau of Meteorology has derived new rare design rainfalls for the whole of Australia using the extensive, quality-controlled rainfall database established for the new Intensity-Frequency-Duration (IFD) design rainfalls. These data have been analysed using a regional LH-moments approach which is more consistent with the method used to derive the new IFDs and which overcomes the limitations of the spatial dependence model in the CRC-FORGE method. In particular, the selection and verification of homogenous regions and the identification of the most appropriate regional probability distribution to adopt relied heavily on the outcomes of the testing of methods undertaken for the new IFDs. However, to focus the analysis on the rarer rainfall events, only the largest events have been used to define the LH-moments.
Keywords: Rare design rainfalls; Intensity-Frequency-Duration (IFD); Annual Exceedance Probability -
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Papers
2015 – Recent Developments in Estimating the Annual Exceedance Probability of Probable Maximum Precipitation
Learn moreR. Nathan, P. Jordan, M. Scorah, S. Lang, G. Kuczera, M. Schaefer, E. Weinmann
This paper describes the development and application of two largely independent methods to estimate the annual exceedance probability (AEP) of Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP). One method is based on the Stochastic Storm Transposition (SST) approach, which combines the “arrival” and “transposition” probabilities of an extreme storm using the total probability theorem. The second method – termed “Stochastic Storm Regression”(SSR) – combines frequency curves of point rainfalls with regression estimates of areal rainfalls; the regression relationship is derived using local and transposed storms, and the final exceedance probabilities are derived using the total probability theorem. The methods are used to derive at-site estimates for two large catchments (with areas of 3550 km2 and 15280 km2) located in inland southern Australia. In addition, the SST approach is used to derive regional estimates for standardised catchments within the Inland GSAM region. Careful attention is given to the uncertainty and sensitivity of the estimates to underlying assumptions, and the results are compared to existing AR&R recommendations.
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Keywords: Annual exceedance probability, Probable Maximum Precipitation. -
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Papers
2015 – Readiness to Impound Assessment using a Risk Based Framework – Murum Dam Case Study
Learn moreRichard Herweynen, Tim Griggs, Alan White
The Ministry of Public Utilities, Sarawak, Malaysia used an independent dam safety consultant to advise them on whether the Murum Dam was ready for impoundment. They were looking for a holistic assessment of the dam from a dam safety perspective. As a result, a risk framework was adopted to identify the key issues that needed to be addressed prior to impoundment of the Murum Dam. The process adopted which is presented in this paper, was transparent and defensible; and provided a reasoned approach for which items must be completed prior to the commencement of impoundment. As a result effort was focused on the key activities required prior to impoundment – whether this was the completion of specific works, the availability of key instrumentation to monitor the dams performance, the availability and operation of key dam safety systems, or the appropriate emergency preparedness should a dam safety incident occur during first filling. This systematic process based on a risk based approach, was a useful method of determining the dam’s readiness for impoundment, and provided an excellent way of communicating the importance of activities to the key stakeholders. The authors believe that this method is transferable to other dam projects, for an assessment of a dam’s readiness for impoundment.
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Keywords: Dam safety, risk, impoundment, reservoir filling. -
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Papers
2015 Poster – The human elements of a successful dam portfolio safety review
Learn morePhillip Kennedy, Robert Murphy, Pat Russell, Chi Fai Wan
Central Highlands Water (CHW) owns thirty four dams varying significantly in size, age, and condition. Thirty of the dams are used for water supply purposes with the remainder providing storage for wastewater reuse schemes. Out of the thirty-four dams, eighteen are more than one hundred years old. They are zoned earthfill embankments, some with a puddle clay core. Fourteen of the dams have been assessed as having potentially high to extreme consequences if the dam fails. The key safety issues among these high consequence dams are inadequate flood capacity, slope instability, and high potential for piping.
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CHW’s management policy includes a commitment to identify, assess, prioritise improvements to, and periodically review the safety of its dams, and implement a dam safety upgrade works program. CHW’s Water Plan 3 (2013 – 2018 economic regulatory period) includes nine dam safety upgrade projects, which were identified from risk assessments and investigations carried out over several years.
In 2013, CHW and MWH formed a Delivery and Operational Efficiency Review (DOER) Group to refine and confirm priorities for the proposed dam safety upgrades. The main objectives of the DOER Group were to identify solutions to meet current ANCOLD guidelines and any opportunities to achieve 10% – 20% reduction in capital expenditure costs during planning or delivery of the works for Water Plan 3, while achieving the intended risk reduction. The key elements of the DOER were to (1) form a working group to cover operational, planning and executive management considerations together with dam safety consultants and Victorian dam management experience; (2) closely scrutinise previous assessments; (3) challenge the justification for the project; (4) understand the priorities whilst aiming to deliver a major works program; and (5) identify additional investigations.
Initial investigations of the DOER Group developed a revised program of works allowing confirmed capital works to proceed while investigations into other projects were carried out. The follow-up investigations have identified optimal outcomes through a program of cost-effective solutions for CHW.
This paper aims to share the experience from planning the DOER, and the further investigations that resulted in the development of an optimised delivery strategy for the upgrade projects.
Keywords: Delivery and Operational Efficiency Review, Risk. -
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Papers
2015 Poster – 40 years of seismic monitoring of reservoir triggered seismicity: Australian case studies
Learn moreVicki-Ann Dimas, Wayne Peck, Gary Gibson and Russell Cuthbertson
Globally, reservoir triggered seismicity (RTS) is a phenomenon sometimes observed in newly constructed large dams worldwide, for over 50 years now. Over 95 sites have been identified to have caused RTS by the infilling of water reservoirs upon completion of their constructions worldwide. In Australia, there are seven confirmed sites with observed RTS phenomenon that are summarized by temporal and spatial means.
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With almost 40 years of seismic monitoring, primarily within eastern Australia, several of Australia’s largest dams have monitored and recorded many RTS events. At present, twelve dams are 100 metres and above in height as possible candidates, with seven of these actually causing RTS and a disputed possible eighth dam.
Important factors of RTS are reservoir characteristics (depth of the water column and reservoir volume), geological and tectonic features (how active nearby faults are and how close to the next cycle of stress release they are temporally) and ground water pore pressure (decrease in pore volume under compaction of weight of reservoir and diffusion of reservoir water through porous rock beneath). RTS is an adjustment process often delayed for several years after infilling of reservoir before eventually subsiding within 10 to 30 years, when seismic activity then returns to its prior state of stress.
Generally there are two type of RTS events, either a major fault near the reservoir most likely leading to an earthquake exceeding magnitude 5.0 to 6.0, or more commonly, a series of small shallow earthquakes.
Seismic monitoring of all dams (except for Ord River) are presented with spatial and temporal series of maps and cross sections, showing the largest earthquake, build-up and decay of RTS events.
Keywords: Seismic monitoring, reservoir triggered seismicity (RTS), earthquake cycle -
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Papers
2015 Poster – Rowallan Dam: management of flood risk during a major dam upgrade
Learn moreKim Robinson, Andrew Pattle and Thomas Shurvell
Rowallan Dam is a 43m high clay core rock fill dam located in Northern Tasmania. The dam impounds 121GL used for hydro power generation and has a High A consequence category.
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Over the summer of 2014/15 major reconstruction works were carried out on the dam to repair a piping incident from 1968. The work entailed reconstructing two sections of the dam down to foundation level and the upper 7m of the 568m dam crest. During the work, the dam was temporarily exposed to a significantly increased flood overtopping risk.
A range of measures were taken to manage the overtopping risk; such as increasing the dewatering capacity of the dam, lake draw down, installation of a sheetpile wall, development of emergency backfill procedures and a flood forecasting system.
The focus of this paper is on the flood forecasting system and how this was integrated into the overall management of overtopping risk during construction. The forecast models were run automatically on a 2 hour schedule using the latest BoM forecast, telemetered lake levels and rainfall from 7 gauges surrounding the catchment. The system provided a continuous 7 day lake level forecast which guided the site team on when to release water to manage the storage.
In the event that the lake level forecast reached a predetermined trigger level, the dam safety team would have been automatically notified and various emergency procedures would have been triggered in response to the flood warning.
This paper discusses the measures that were taken to manage the flood risk, how it worked in practice and conclusions which are applicable more generally to managing overtopping risk during dam works.
Keywords: dam construction flood risk, flood forecasting -
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Papers
2015 Poster – Remedial works in Bakers Gully Dams – partially decommissioning
Learn moreAida Baharestani, Dominic Kerr
North East Water (NEW) manages two reservoirs in series on Bakers Gully Creek, approximately 1.5km south of Bright in north-east Victoria. Both dams were constructed more than 100 years ago and taken out of service in the 1970s.
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The Bakers Gully dams had an unacceptable risk profile according to ANCOLD’s Limit of Tolerability.
As the dams are out of service and have no operational benefit, NEW made the decision to partially decommission the dams.
The objective of the work was to lower the consequence categories of the dams from “High C” to “Low” and increase the spillway capacities according to ANCOLD Guidelines and ultimately reduce the dam safety risks to an acceptable level.
This paper describes the different stages of the project ranging from concept design, community engagement, environmental assessment and detailed design. In particular the paper explores the complexities of balancing in cost and public safety with community and ecological values.
Keywords: Dam decommissioning, Community engagement, Severity of damage and loss -
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Papers
2015 – Efficient and cost-effective modelling and analysis of hydraulic structures using CFD
Learn moreThomas Ewing, Marius Jonker & James Willey
The use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling techniques is gaining broad acceptance in the dams industry as an important design tool for hydraulic structures. This is particularly so in the earlier stages of analysis and design where the construction of physical models would be prohibitive on the basis of cost and time. Current CFD techniques allow users to produce a rapid evaluation of the existing conditions, which when coupled with the ability to quickly test an array of potential scenarios, enables the incorporation of innovative design solutions that may otherwise not have been considered during the design selection process prior to the advent of CFD capabilities.
Details of a recent case study are presented to illustrate the broad capabilities and benefits of CFD modelling techniques and their application in engineering analysis and design. The case study involves modelling of the Somerset Dam, a 50 m high concrete gravity dam with a gated overflow spillway including overtopping of the spillway bridge, gates and complex flow conditions in the abutment sections, which individually and collectively could not be accurately analysed with the traditional, simplified methods. The CFD study enabled an understanding of the hydraulic behaviour including discharge efficiency, jet impact loads on the gates and gate operating equipment and bridge structure; extent of potential erosion as a result of jet impingement on the abutments; loads on sluices and behaviour of the stilling basin. In addition to being a very large and complex model, the modelling involved several novel technical aspects.
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The case study clearly highlights the benefits of the CFD modelling in understanding the complex hydraulic conditions and delivering cost effective solutions.
Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Somerset Dam. -
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Papers
2015 – Remedial works to reduce seepage under Visegrad HPP dam
Learn moreNikifor Petrovic, Sladoljub Pezerovic
Dam rehabilitation works at the Visegrad Hydropower Project on the River Drina in Bosnia and Herzegovina were completed in October 2014 after two years of very challenging and collaborative effort between the client, designer and contractor.
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The successfully accomplished remedial works programme was a highly complex geotechnical intervention. The dam was constructed on a karst foundation extending up to 200 m below reservoir floor level. Rates of seepage through the foundation increased over time, from 1.4 m3/s following first impoundment in 1989, to 14.7 m3/s in 2009.
The rehabilitation works comprised:
Preparatory works (site installation, work platforms, conveyer belts, electricity and water supply, drilling and grouting equipment installation);
Site investigation works (drilling of boreholes, measurements of inclination, geo-physical carotage, downhole video, underwater camera recording);
Installation of monitoring equipment and implementation of real time recording system;
Installation of inert material into a sinkhole within the storage area and into the bore holes located upstream of the dam; and
Grouting of the foundation area using different grout mixes and grouting methods.
During rehabilitation works the main achievements were:
A total of about 37,300 m3 of inert material (granular materials with different fractions from 0 to 32 mm) was installed into the foundation cracks and caverns. This was a significant achievement due to very complex geological conditions and resulted in a seepage reduction through the foundation and improvement of the overall safety and stability of the dam.
The total consumption of grouting material was in access of 2,500 tonnes of cement, bentonite, sand and additives.
After completion of the work, seepage of water through the foundation was reduced to about 4.5 m3/s.
Keywords: Seepage, remedial works, dam, grouting, inert material. -
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Papers
2015 – Design of a regulating structure between two reservoirs
Learn morePouya Amirsayafi
Chahnimeh reservoirs with 1.4 billion cubic metres storage capacity have a critical role in water supply for both drinking water and agricultural purposes for the whole Sistan region in eastern Iran. Sistan river used to be the only source for agricultural purposes, so that several gated diversion weirs were constructed on the river in the past 50 years. Because of climate change and upstream development causing flow fluctuations, the river alone is no longer a reliable source for irrigation purposes. So the idea of storing water in Chahnimeh reservoirs and optimised operation of reservoirs have become a necessity. In order to achieve this, development of structures to have efficient operational plan of the river and reservoirs system is underway.
Several projects have been built for more efficient use of the reservoirs, some projects still being designed. One of the latest is the project of “Development of Operational Infrastructures for Chahnimeh Reservoirs” designing a structure to regulate flow between Chahnimeh I and III reservoirs. This kind of structure operating between two connecting reservoirs is so rare, so that innovation is needed to design a cost effective structure covering different operational conditions. Different structures were investigated and the summary of selection of structure types are presented. The paper illustrates challenging design of the project, useful for engineers who might be or will be dealing with such a project. By designing gates with pre-compressed rubber sealing, huge amount of costs associated with having two different gates for different directions of flow are avoided. Because of saturated foundation, by designing a diversion system between two reservoirs, it is possible to undertake pre-consolidation of foundation soil and to drain saturated foundation water. This would reduce settlement of the foundation of the structure after construction to the extent that by construction of a pile group, the gated structure will perform with high reliability for gates function. This type of structure is so rare and the methods and experiences of the presented design can be used by other engineers and consultants in similar projects. The estimated cost of the project is 15 million dollars and with construction under way, completion is expected in 2017.Keywords: regulating structure, gates, reservoirs, reservoir operation
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Papers
2015 – Estimating potential loss of life downstream of retarding basins
Learn moreSimon Lang, Chriselyn Meneses, Kelly Maslin, Mark Arnold
It is now common practice for dam owners in Australia to take a risk based approach to managing the safety of their large dams. Some dam owners are also using risk based approaches to manage other significant assets. For example, Melbourne Water manage the safety of their retarding basins in a manner similar to their water supply dams.
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Assessing the risks posed by retarding basins using methods developed for larger dams can raise challenges. For example, the Graham (1999) approach to estimating potential loss of life (PLL) is generally applied when estimating the consequences of dam failure. However, Graham (1999) may not be the most suitable model for estimating PLL downstream of structures with relatively low heights and storage volumes (e.g. retarding basins), given the characteristics of the case histories used to develop the method.
In this paper six potential methods for estimating PLL are tested on four retarding basins in Melbourne. The methods are Graham (1999), the new Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology (RCEM), the UK risk assessment for reservoir safety (RARS) method, a spreadsheet application of HEC-FIA 3.0, and empirical methods developed by Jonkman (2007) and Jonkman et al. (2009). Results from the methods are compared, and comment is made about which is most suitable.
Keywords: potential loss of life, dam safety, risk analysis, retarding basins. -
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Papers
2015 – Revisiting a forgotten dam building technology: concrete core walls in embankment dams
Learn moreRichard R. Davidson, P.E., CPEng Kenneth B. Hansen, P.E.
Early in the twentieth century, placing concrete core walls within embankment dams was a popular construction technique for small to medium height dams. It became in vogue as a replacement for the popular British dam construction technology of puddle clay core dams which were used between the 1860’s and 1920’s. It avoided the many problems with semi-hydraulic / manned placement methods of the puddle clay cores within narrow trenches. However, after the mid 1930’s this concrete core wall construction fell out of favour because of the improvements made in embankment compaction methods and the difficulties in building reinforced concrete core walls to more significant heights.
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Today concrete core wall embankment dams are now reaching an age where their continued performance is being questioned. This dam building technology has become extinct and is unknown to the last few generations of dam engineers. Therefore, it is relevant to re-examine this dam building technology in a modern context and work on answering the following questions. How have these dams performed after almost a century of service? Are there unanticipated performance features that have produced positive results when subjected to extreme flood and seismic events? Does the concrete provide enhanced performance over time? What role does steel reinforcement play in the performance of the core wall? Are there lessons here that can be applied to the more common concrete cutoff wall solutions being applied to embankment dams with seepage problems? This paper examines these questions with a number of illustrative case histories to provide a retrospective illumination of this forgotten dam building technology.
Keywords: Embankment dams, Concrete core walls, Dam construction history.