Publications related to Dam | EPFL Graph Search

A comprehensive review on geomembrane systems application in hydropower

Geomembrane systems have been used at hydropower plants as rehabilitation and mitigation technology for several decades and are now used worldwide. In the context of planning an energy transition that promotes the sustainable use of water resources for ene ...

2024

The importance of young professionals for dam engineering in Switzerland

Samuel Luke Vorlet, Valentina Favero

In Switzerland, hydropower is the main energy source and contributes to about 58.3% of the total production. The 2050 energy strategy aims to increase this share in the coming decades. This increase is a challenge for hydropower plants. The maintenance and ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Swiss dams: Overview of historical development

Anton Schleiss

With more than 220 large dams in operation, compared to its surface of some 41ʹ000 km2, Switzerland has a very large fleet. They were erected to meet various economic and protection needs. Their main assignments concern the storage of water for later use, ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Contribution of the Hydraulic Laboratories of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology to Dam Safety

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Samuel Luke Vorlet

Bien que la construction de barrages en général et l’hydraulique des barrages en particulier soient des domaines techniques très développés, le potentiel de risque associé aux barrages justifie dans la plupart des cas la vérification et l’optimisation de l ...

2023

Dynamic behavior of exposed geomembrane systems in pressure waterways

Giovanni De Cesare, Samuel Luke Vorlet, Roberto Proença Seixas

Geomembrane systems have been used in dams and reservoirs as rehabilitation technology since several decades and are now used worldwide. They act as impervious layer to prevent and mitigate water leakage and damage to structures. They meet the needs of man ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Exploring the efficacy of reservoir fine sediment management measures through numerical simulations

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Samuel Luke Vorlet, Montana Marshall

Reservoir sedimentation is one of the main challenges in the sustainable operation of large reservoirs because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. To ensure the sustainability of deep reservoir ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Advances in Spillway Hydraulics: From Theory to Practice

Anton Schleiss, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos

Over the past decades, significant advances have been achieved in hydraulic structures for dams, namely in water release structures such as spillway weirs, chutes, and energy dissipators. This editorial presents a brief overview of the eleven papers in thi ...

2023

Experimental modeling of fine sediment routing: SEDMIX device with thrusters

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Montana Marshall

Reservoir sedimentation is a key challenge for storage sustainability because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. A preliminary EPFL study proposed and studied an innovative device (called SEDM ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Characterization of Thruster-Induced Turbulence for Fine Sediment Suspension

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Montana Marshall, Andre Luis Stakowian

Reservoir sedimentation is a key challenge for storage sustainability because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. A preliminary EPFL study proposed and studied an innovative device (called SEDM ...

2023

Experimental investigations on plunge pool protection measures for Ilarion Dam in Greece

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Romain Nathan Hippolyte Merlin Van Mol

Ilarion Dam is a 130 m high earthfill dam at Aliakmon River in northern Greece. The dam was commissioned in 2010. It has two spillway tunnels with ski jumps at the outlets. The two spillways are designed to release a total discharge of 5'500 m3/s during th ...

2022

The Land-Water-Energy Nexus of Ruzizi River Dams (Lake Kivu Outflow, African Great Lakes Region): Status, Challenges, and Perspectives

Alfred Johny Wüest

Hydroelectric power (HP) represents the main source of electricity in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo. The demand for new dam construction is high, and major projects are currently progressing through planning and implementation stages. ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

Effect of blocked driftwood on the hydraulic performance of a gated standard weir

Giovanni De Cesare, Michael Pfister, Loïc Bénet

Driftwood belongs to riverine ecosystems and is stored and transported in every natural stream. Hydraulic structures built in streams typically alter the flow characteristics and might consequently get in conflict with driftwood. The latter can get trapped ...

International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR)2022

Plunging Circular Jets: Experimental Characterization of Dynamic Pressures Near the Stagnation Zone

Giovanni De Cesare, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Gregoire Aurelien Marie Jamet

Spillways are a requirement for dams’ safety, mainly preventing overtopping during floods. A common spillway solution involves plunging jets, which dissipate a considerable flow energy in the plunge pool. Energy dissipation has to occur in a controlled man ...

2022

Heightening of Very High Gravity Dams: The Case Study of the Grande Dixence

Giovanni De Cesare, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Basile Clerc

Heightening very high gravity dams is one of the solutions considered as part of the energy transition and to mitigate the effects of climate change. The paper presents a stepwise approach to assess the potential for dam heightening and its impact on the h ...

Springer, Cham2020

Untersuchung der ökomorphologischen Wirksamkeit von Sedimentzugaben unterhalb von Talsperren [Assessment of the eco-morphological effectiveness of sediment augmentation downstream of dams]

Giovanni De Cesare, Christian Mörtl

The regulation of discharge and the retention of sediments in reservoirs disturb the natural water dynamics in residual flow stretches below reservoirs. However, a dynamic river morphology as well as near-natural hydrological hydrographs are fundamental ...

ETH2021

Reservoir Level Rise under Extreme Driftwood Blockage at Ogee Crest

Giovanni De Cesare, Michael Pfister, Loïc Bénet

Dams are civil structures essential to modern civilization. However, they can be a threat if not properly designed and operated. A particular risk that potentially can lead to dam failure is the blocking of the spillway inlet with driftwood or debris. This ...

2021

Experimental and Numerical Study on Scour-Protection Methods in a Stilling Basin: Case Study of Chancy-Pougny Dam

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Erik Bollaert, Sabine Chamoun, Davide Wüthrich

Chancy-Pougny is a run-of-river dam on the Swiss–French border constructed in the early 1920s. Since its commissioning, the operation of the four spillway gates has been responsible for a progressive erosion of the stilling basin. The future scour potentia ...

2021

Hybrid asynchronous SEM/FEM co-simulation for seismic nonlinear analysis of concrete gravity dams

Nicolas Richart, Michael Ludovic Brun

The aim of this work is to take full advantage of Spectral Element (SE) and Finite Element (FE) codes by setting up a SEM/FEM co-simulation strategy for soil structure interaction problems, involving a SE code to generate and propagate elastic waves in the ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

A Planner-Trader Decomposition for Multi-Market Hydro Scheduling

Daniel Kuhn, Napat Rujeerapaiboon, Kilian Schindler, Wolfram Wiesemann

Peak/off-peak spreads on European electricity forward and spot markets are eroding due to the ongoing nuclear phaseout and the steady growth in photovoltaic capacity. The reduced profitability of peak/off- peak arbitrage forces hydropower producers to reco ...

2024

Assessing the energy potential of modernizing the European hydropower fleet

Anton Schleiss, Elena Vagnoni

About 50% of all hydropower plants (HPPs) worldwide were originally commissioned more than 40 years ago, so that the advanced age of the fleet is a major concern across all continents, and especially in Europe. The modernization of HPPs can generate severa ...

Elsevier2021