FLOOD00569

• County: Statewide
• Title: A Method for Analyzing Effects of Dam Failures in Design Studies
• Date: 8/1/1972
• Prepared For: US
• Prepared By: US Army Corps of Engineers
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Educational/Technical/Reference Information

A METHOD FOR ANALYZING EFFECTS OF DAM FAILURES
IN DESIGN STUDIES(l)
by William A. Thomas(2)

In recent years, the failures of several small dams have prompted

design, construction and rep;ulatory agencies working in the field of

water resources development to consider and analyze the effects of

flood waves that could result from failure of existing or proposed

dams. These flood waves, referred to herein as dam-break floods, are

of particular importance because of the large momentum forces associated

with them. Effects, such as the extent and duration of inundation in the

flood plain below a breached dam, the rate of travel of the flood wave,

the temporal and spatial variations in flood wave attenuation, the

forces exerted by the flood wave on structures within the flood plain,

and the environmental impact of the flood wave are examples of the types

of effects that are important. In addition, each individual situation

will introduce special considerations into the analysis.

The study which is discussed in this paper was conducted to deter-

mine how much force a dam-break flood wave would exert on a downstream

dam. There are three major aspects to the problem: determining the

discharge hydrogrsph when a dam is assumed to fail; routing that discharge

downstream to the point of interest; and applying the resulting forces

to the structure in question. The first two aspects are treated in this

paper. The method that was utilized to calculate and route the dam-break

(l)For presentation at the ASCE Hydraulics Division Specialty Conference,
Cornell University, August 1972.

(2)
. Research Hydraulic Engineer, Research Branch, The Hydrologic Engineering
Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Davis, California.