Publications related to Reservoir Level Rise under Extreme Driftwood Blockage at Ogee Crest

The importance of young professionals for dam engineering in Switzerland

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

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

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

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

Giovanni De Cesare, Anton Schleiss, 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

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

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

Effect of 30-Degree Sloping Smooth and Stepped Chute Approach Flow on the Performance of a Classical Stilling Basin

Anton Schleiss, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos, Michael Pfister, Ivan Stojnic

Advances in dam construction techniques have significantly increased the number of stepped spillways implemented worldwide. Although stepped chutes provide enhanced energy dissipation along the chute, as compared to smooth chutes, an adequate energy dissip ...

2020

Stilling Basin Performance Downstream of Stepped Spillways

Ivan Stojnic

Advances in dam construction techniques have significantly increased the number of implemented stepped spillways worldwide. A key hydraulic feature of a stepped chute, compared to a smooth chute, is the enhanced energy dissipation resulting in a reduced re ...

EPFL2020

Integrating the Finite Element Method with a Data-Driven Approach for Dam Displacement Prediction

Zhenzhu Meng, Chenfei Shao, Yating Hu

Both numerical simulations and data-driven methods have been applied in dam's displacement modeling. For monitored displacement data-driven methods, the physical mechanism and structural correlations were rarely discussed. In order to take the spatial and ...

2020

Numerical Simulations of an Innovative Water Stirring Device for Fine Sediment Release: The Case Study of the Future Trift Reservoir

Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Azin Amini, Anass Chraibi

Reservoir sedimentation and consequently lack of storage volume and perturbation of the operation of intakes and bottom outlet is a key challenge affecting both hydropower production as well as dam safety and flood management. In the framework of a peer-re ...

Springer2020

Blockage of driftwood and resulting head increase upstream of an ogee spillway with piers

Anton Schleiss, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos, Michael Pfister, Paloma Furlan

Accumulations of floating debris in reservoirs can have negative impacts on the safe operation of a dam. Thus, adequate spillway design in view of driftwood is of paramount importance. Herein, investigation of driftwood blockage with a reservoir flow appro ...

Canadian Dam Association2019

Hydraulic Reconstruction of the 1818 Gietro Glacial Lake Outburst Flood

Eric Bardou, Christophe Ancey, Martin Funk, Tomás Alfredo Trewhela Palacios

In the spring of 1818, ice avalanches from the Gietro Glacier created an ice dam, which in turn formed a glacial lake in the Drance Valley (Canton of Valais, Switzerland). Today, its maximum volume is estimated to have been 25x10(6) m(3). Cantonal authorit ...

2019

Blocking probability of large wood and resulting head increase at ogee crest spillways

Paloma Furlan

Large wood increases the hydraulic complexity of rivers, yet it may block and modify the flood discharge capacity of hydraulic structures such as bridges and spillways. When spillway blockage occurs, dangerous and hazardous situations have been observed at ...

EPFL2019

A Data-Driven Approach Based on Multivariate Copulas for Quantitative Risk Assessment of Concrete Dam

Zhenzhu Meng, Chenfei Shao, Yating Hu

Risk assessment of dam's running status is an important part of dam management. A data-driven method based on monitored displacement data has been applied in risk assessment, owing to its easy operation and real-time analysis. However, previous data-driven ...

2019

Potential increase in energy storage capacity in the Swiss Alps to support the massive development of renewables: Case study of the Grande Dixence hydropower scheme

Anton Schleiss, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Blaise Monay, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin

Only 42 % of the mean annual production of large hydropower plants in the Swiss Alps is stored in their reservoirs. Once the reservoirs are full at the end of the summer semester, plants are operated as run-on-the-river in order to avoid spilling. A signif ...

2019

Hydraulic-morphological habitat assessment in rivers considering residual flow, sediment replenishment and artificial flood events

Severin Stähly

Dams store water and trap sediment in their reservoirs. Downstream river segments, hence, are affected by a limited sediment dynamics. This becomes obvious by river bed incision, limited geomorphological variability and depletion of hydraulic habitats for ...

EPFL2019

Influence of density of large stems on the blocking probability at spillways

Anton Schleiss, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos, Michael Pfister, Paloma Furlan

Dam safety is strongly linked to the probability of occurrence of large floods. Floods can transport large wood (LW) into reservoirs and towards water release structures as spillways. Due to blocking and clogging, LW may significantly influence the dischar ...

Utah State University2018

Evolution of reservoir flushing and emptying practices in a cascade of large reservoirs across several decades

Giovanni De Cesare, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Sebastián Guillén Ludeña, Samuel Luke Vorlet

Reservoir sedimentation is, at present, one of the main concerns in the operational management of dams in the Alps. For larger seasonal storage reservoirs, the main operational concern is the blockage of bottom outlets and turbine abrasion. In case of infr ...

2018

Kariba plunge pool rehabilitation

Giovanni De Cesare, Anton Schleiss, Azin Amini, Claudia Ylla Arbos, Ivan Stojnic

The Kariba Dam is a 128 m high arch dam located on the Zambezi River, between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It forms the Kariba lake, with a surface of 5400 km2 and a capacity of 185 km3. In the 20 years following dam construction, heavy rainfalls required frequent ...

2018