Dam

/dam, dahm/, n.

(Carl Peter) Henrik /kahrl pee"ter hen"rik/; Dan. /kahrddl pay"teuhrdd hen"rddik/, 1895-1976, Danish biochemist: Nobel prize for medicine 1943.

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I

Barrier built across a stream, river, or estuary to conserve water for such uses as human consumption, irrigation, flood control, and electric-power generation.

The earliest recorded dam is believed to be a masonry structure 49 ft (15 m) high built across the Nile River in Egypt с 2900 BC. Modern dams are generally built of earth fill, rock fill, masonry, or monolithic concrete. Earth-fill (or embankment) dams, such as Egypt's Aswan High Dam, are usually used across broad rivers to retain water. The profile of an earth-fill dam is a broad-based triangle. Concrete dams may take various forms. The gravity dam uses its own dead weight to resist the horizontal force of the water. Concrete-buttress dams reduce material in the wall itself by using support buttresses around the outside base. An arch dam, such as Hoover Dam, is built in a convex arch facing the reservoir, and owes its strength essentially to its shape, which is particularly efficient in transferring hydraulic forces to supports.

II

(as used in expressions)

Aswan High Dam

Hoover Dam

Boulder Dam

Three Gorges Dam Project

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▪ engineering

Introduction

 structure built across a stream, river, or estuary to retain water. Dams are built to provide water for human consumption, for irrigating arid and semiarid lands, or for use in industrial processes. They are used to increase the amount of water available for generating hydroelectric power, to reduce peak discharge of floodwater created by large storms or heavy snowmelt, and to increase the depth of water in a river in order to improve navigation and allow barges and ships to travel more easily. Dams can also provide a lake for recreational activities such as swimming, boating, and fishing. Many dams are built for more than one purpose; for example, water in a single reservoir can be used for fishing, to generate hydroelectric power, and to support an irrigation system. Water-control structures of this type are often designated multipurpose dams.

      Auxiliary works that can help a dam function properly include spillways (spillway), movable gates (gate), and valves (valve) that control the release of surplus water downstream from the dam. Dams can also include intake structures that deliver water to a power station or to canals (canals and inland waterways), tunnels (tunnels and underground excavations), or pipelines (pipeline) designed to convey the water stored by the dam to far-distant places. Other auxiliary works are systems for evacuating or flushing out silt that accumulates in the reservoir, locks (lock) for permitting the passage of ships through or around the dam site, and fish ladders (graduated steps) and other devices to assist fish seeking to swim past or around a dam.

      A dam can be a central structure in a multipurpose scheme designed to conserve water resources on a regional basis. Multipurpose dams can hold special importance in developing countries, where a single dam may bring significant benefits related to hydroelectric power production, agricultural development, and industrial growth. However, dams have become a focus of environmental concern because of their impact on migrating fish and riparian ecosystems (ecosystem). In addition, large reservoirs can inundate vast tracts of land that are home to many people, and this has fostered opposition to dam projects by groups who question whether the benefits of proposed projects are worth the costs.

       World's largest dams World's largest damsIn terms of engineering, dams fall into several distinct classes defined by structural type and by building material. The decision as to which type of dam to build largely depends on the foundation conditions in the valley, the construction materials available, the accessibility of the site to transportation networks, and the experiences of the engineers, financiers, and promoters responsible for the project. In modern dam engineering, the choice of materials is usually between concrete, earthfill, and rockfill. Although in the past a number of dams were built of jointed masonry, this practice is now largely obsolete and has been supplanted by concrete. Concrete is used to build massive gravity dams, thin arch dams, and buttress dams. The development of roller-compacted concrete allowed high-quality concrete to be placed with the type of equipment originally developed to move, distribute, and consolidate earthfill. Earthfill and rockfill dams are usually grouped together as embankment dams because they constitute huge mounds of earth and rock that are assembled into imposing man-made embankments.

History

Ancient dams

The Middle East (Middle East, ancient)

      The oldest known dam in the world is a masonry and earthen embankment at Jawa in the Black Desert of modern Jordan. The Jawa Dam was built in the 4th millennium BC to hold back the waters of a small stream and allow increased irrigation production on arable land downstream. Evidence exists of another masonry-faced earthen dam built about 2700 BC at Sadd el-Kafara, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt. The Sadd el-Kafara failed shortly after completion when, in the absence of a spillway that could resist erosion, it was overtopped by a flood and washed away. The oldest dam still in use is a rockfill embankment about 6 metres (20 feet) high on the Orontes River in Syria, built about 1300 BC for local irrigation use.

      The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built dams between 700 and 250 BC for water supply and irrigation. Contemporary with these was the earthen Maʾrib Dam in the southern Arabian Peninsula, which was more than 15 metres (50 feet) high and nearly 600 metres (1,970 feet) long. Flanked by spillways, this dam delivered water to a system of irrigation canals for more than 1,000 years. Remains of the Maʾrib Dam are still evident in present-day Maʾrib, Yemen. Other dams were built in this period in Sri Lanka, India, and China.

The Romans (ancient Rome)

      Despite their skill as civil engineers, the Romans' role in the evolution of dams is not particularly remarkable in terms of number of structures built or advances in height. Their skill lay in the comprehensive collection and storage of water and in its transport and distribution by aqueducts (aqueduct). At least two Roman dams in southwestern Spain, Proserpina and Cornalbo, are still in use, while the reservoirs of others have filled with silt. The Proserpina Dam, 12 metres (40 feet) high, features a masonry-faced core wall of concrete backed by earth that is strengthened by buttresses supporting the downstream face. The Cornalbo Dam features masonry walls that form cells; these cells are filled with stones or clay and faced with mortar. The merit of curving a dam upstream was appreciated by at least some Roman engineers, and the forerunner of the modern curved gravity dam was built by Byzantine engineers in AD 550 at a site near the present Turkish-Syrian border.

Early dams of East Asia

      In East Asia, dam construction evolved quite independently from practices in the Mediterranean world. In 240 BC a stone crib was built across the Jing River in the Gukou valley in China; this structure was about 30 metres (100 feet) high and about 300 metres (1,000 feet) long. Many earthen dams of moderate height (in some cases of great length) were built by the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka after the 5th century BC to form reservoirs or tanks for extensive irrigation works. The Kalabalala Tank, which was formed by an earthen dam 24 metres (79 feet) high and nearly 6 km (3.75 miles) in length, had a perimeter of 60 km (37 miles) and helped store monsoon rainfall for irrigating the country around the ancient capital of Anuradhapura (Anurādhapura). Many of these tanks in Sri Lanka are still in use today.

      In Japan the Diamonike Dam reached a height of 32 metres (105 feet) in AD 1128. Numerous dams were also constructed in India and Pakistan. In India a design employing hewn stone to face the steeply sloping sides of earthen dams evolved, reaching a climax in the 16-km- (10-mile-) long Veeranam Dam in Tamil Nadu, built from AD 1011 to 1037.

      In Persia (modern-day Iran) the Kebar Dam and the Kurit Dam represented the world's first large-scale thin-arch dams. The Kebar and Kurit dams were built early in the 14th century by Il-Khanid Mongols; the Kebar Dam reached a height of 26 metres (85 feet), and the Kurit Dam extended 64 metres (210 feet) above its foundation. Remarkably, the Kurit Dam stood as the world's tallest dam until the beginning of the 20th century.

Forerunners of the modern dam

The 15th to the 18th century

      In the 15th and 16th centuries, dam construction resumed in Italy and, on a larger scale, in Spain, where Roman and Moorish influence was still felt. In particular, the Tibi Dam across the Monnegre River in Spain, a curved gravity structure 42 metres (138 feet) high, was not surpassed in height in western Europe until the building of the Gouffre d'Enfer Dam in France almost three centuries later. Also in Spain, the 23-metre- (75-foot-) high Elche Dam, which was built in the early 17th century for irrigation use, was an innovative thin-arch masonry structure. In the British Isles and northern Europe, where rainfall is ample and well distributed throughout the year, dam construction before the Industrial Revolution proceeded on only a modest scale in terms of height. Dams were generally limited to forming water reservoirs for towns, powering water mills, and supplying water for navigation canals. Probably the most remarkable of these structures was the 35-metre- (115-foot-) high earthen dam built in 1675 at Saint-Ferréol, near Toulouse, France. This dam provided water for the Midi Canal, and for more than 150 years it was the highest earthen dam in the world.

The 19th century

      Up to the middle of the 19th century, dam design and construction were largely based upon experience and empirical knowledge. An understanding of material and structural theory had been accumulating for 250 years, with scientific luminaries such as Galileo, Isaac Newton (Newton, Sir Isaac), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm), Robert Hooke (Hooke, Robert), Daniel Bernoulli (Bernoulli, Daniel), Leonhard Euler (Euler, Leonhard), Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de), and Claude-Louis Navier among those who made significant contributions to these advancements. In the 1850s, William John Macquorn Rankine (Rankine, William John Macquorn), professor of civil engineering at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, successfully demonstrated how applied science could help the practical engineer. Rankine's work on the stability of loose earth, for example, provided a better understanding of the principles of dam design and performance of structures. In mid-century France, J. Augustin Tortene de Sazilly led the way in developing the mathematical analysis of vertically faced masonry gravity dams, and François Zola first utilized mathematical analysis in designing a thin-arch masonry dam.

Development of modern structural theory

      Masonry and concrete dam design is based on conventional structural theory. In this relationship, two phases may be recognized. The first, extending from 1853 until about 1910 and represented by the contributions of a number of French and British engineers, was actively concerned with the precise profile of gravity dams in which the horizontal thrust of water in a reservoir is resisted by the weight of the dam itself and the inclined reaction of the dam's foundation. Starting about 1910, however, engineers began to recognize that concrete dams are monolithic three-dimensional structures in which the distribution of stress and the deflections of individual points depend on stresses and deflections of many other points in the structure. Movements at one point have to be compatible with movements at all others. Because of the complexity of the stress pattern, model techniques were gradually employed. Models were built in plasticine, rubber, plaster, and finely graded concrete. Utilizing virtual models, computers facilitate engineers' use of finite element analysis, by which a monolithic structure is mathematically conceived as an assembly of separate, discrete blocks. Study of both physical models and computer simulations (computer simulation) permits deflections of a dam's foundations and structure to be analyzed. However, while computers are useful in analyzing designs, they cannot generate (or create) the dam designs proposed for specific sites. This latter process, which is often referred to as form making, remains the responsibility of human engineers.

   During the 100 years up to the end of World War II, experience in design and construction of dams advanced in many directions. In the first decade of the 20th century, many large dams were built in the United States and western Europe. In succeeding decades, particularly during the war years, many impressive structures were built in the United States by federal government agencies and private power companies. Hoover Dam, built on the Colorado River at the Arizona-Nevada border between 1931 and 1936, is an outstanding example of a curved gravity dam built in a narrow gorge across a major river and employing advanced design principles. It has a height of 221 metres (726 feet) from its foundations, a crest length of 379 metres (1,244 feet), and a reservoir capacity of 37 billion cubic metres (48 billion cubic yards).

 Among earthen dams, Fort Peck Dam, completed in 1940 on the Missouri River in Montana, contained the greatest volume of fill, 96 million cubic metres (126 million cubic yards). This volume was not exceeded until the completion in 1975 of Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, with 145 million cubic metres (190 million cubic yards) of fill.

      Construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam in China began in 1994, with most construction completed by 2007. However, interest in the project extended back several decades, and American engineer J.L. Savage, who had played an important role in the building of Hoover Dam, worked on preliminary designs for a large dam on the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) in the mid-1940s before the Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949. Planning for the existing structure commenced in earnest in the 1980s, and construction began after approval by the National People's Congress in 1992. Built as a straight-crested concrete gravity structure, Three Gorges Dam was constructed using a trestle-and-crane method of transporting and casting concrete similar to that used in the 1930s for the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in the northwestern United States.

      Three Gorges Dam is 2,335 metres (7,660 feet) long with a maximum height of 185 metres (607 feet); it incorporates 28 million cubic metres (37 million cubic yards) of concrete and 463,000 metric tons of steel into its design. When fully operational, the dam's hydroelectric power plant will have the largest generating capacity in the world at 22,500 megawatts. When full, the reservoir impounded by the dam will extend back up the Yangtze River for more than 600 km (almost 400 miles).

Rise of environmental (environment) and economic concerns

      The effect of dams on the natural environment became an issue of public concern at the end of the 20th century. Much of this concern was energized by fears that dams were destroying the populations of migrating (or spawning) fish, which were being blocked or impeded by the construction of dams across rivers and waterways. (See below Fish passes (dam).) In more general terms, dams were often perceived—or portrayed—as not simply transforming the environment to serve human desires but also obliterating the environment and causing the destruction of flora and fauna and picturesque landscapes on a massive scale. Dams were also blamed for inundating the cultural homelands of native peoples, who were forced to relocate out of reservoir “take” areas created by large-scale dams. None of these concerns sprang up without warning, and they all have roots that date back many decades.

      The environmental problems associated with dams have been exacerbated as dams have increased in height. However, even relatively small dams have prompted opposition by people who believe that their interests are adversely affected by a particular structure. For example, in colonial America, legal action was often taken by upstream landowners who believed that the pond impounded by a small mill dam erected downstream was flooding—and thus rendering unusable—land that could otherwise be used for growing crops or as pasture for livestock. By the late 18th century, when many mill dams were beginning to reach heights that could not easily be jumped or traversed by spawning fish, some people sought to have them removed because of their effect on fishing. In such situations, opposition to dams is not driven by an abstract concern for the environment or the survival of riparian ecosystems; rather, it is driven by an appreciation that a particular dam is transforming the environment in ways that serve only certain special interests.

      In the 1870s one of the first wide-scale efforts to block the construction of a dam because of misgivings about its potential effect upon the landscape came in the Lake District of northwestern England. The Lake District is recognized as one of the most picturesque regions of England because of its mountains and rolling hills. However, this same landscape also offered a good location for an artificial reservoir that could feed high-quality water to the growing industrial city of Manchester almost 160 km (100 miles) to the south. The city's Thirlmere Dam was eventually built and generally accepted as a positive development, but not before it aroused impassioned opposition among citizens throughout the country who feared that part of England's natural and cultural heritage might be defiled by the creation of a “water tank” in the midst of the Lake District.

      In the United States a similar but even more impassioned battle erupted in the early 20th century over plans by the city of San Francisco to build a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Located more than 900 metres (3,000 feet) above sea level, the Hetch Hetchy site offered a good storage location in the Sierra Nevada for water that could be delivered without pumping to San Francisco via an aqueduct nearly 270 km (167 miles) long. Hetch Hetchy, however, is also located within the northern boundaries of Yosemite National Park. The renowned naturalist John Muir (Muir, John) led the way in fighting the proposed dam and—with assistance from Sierra Club members and other citizens across the United States who were concerned about the loss of natural landscapes to commercial and municipal development—made the fight over the preservation of Hetch Hetchy Valley a national issue. In the end, the benefits to be provided by the dam—including the development of at least 200,000 kilowatts of hydroelectric power—outweighed the costs to be exacted by the inundation of the valley. Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1913, the construction of the dam, known today as O'Shaughnessy Dam in honour of the city engineer who oversaw its construction, was a defeat for the Sierra Club and landscape preservationists, who continued to use it as a symbol and rallying cry for mid-20th-century environmental causes.

      After World War II, plans were made by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to build a hydroelectric power dam across the Green River at Echo Park Canyon within the boundaries of Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Many of the same issues raised at Hetch Hetchy were again debated, but in this instance opponents such as the Sierra Club were able to block construction of the dam through a concerted effort to lobby Congress and win support from the American public at large. However, in its effort to save Echo Park, the Sierra Club dropped opposition to the proposed Glen Canyon Dam across the Colorado River near the Arizona-Utah border, and this 216-metre (710-foot) high concrete arch dam, built between 1956 and 1966, eventually came to be seen by environmentalists as being responsible for destroying a beautiful pristine landscape encompassing thousands of square kilometres. Anger over the Glen Canyon Dam energized the Sierra Club to mount a major campaign against additional dams proposed for construction along the Colorado River near the borders of Grand Canyon National Park. By the late 1960s, plans for these proposed Grand Canyon dams were politically dead. Although the reasons for their demise were largely the result of regional water conflicts between states in the Pacific Northwest and states in the American Southwest, the environmental movement took credit for saving America from the desecration of a national treasure.

 In developing parts of the world, dams are still perceived as an important source of hydroelectric power and irrigation water. Environmental costs associated with dams have nonetheless attracted attention. In India the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people out of reservoir areas generated intense political opposition to some dam projects.

      In China the Three Gorges Dam (constructed from 1994 to 2006) generated significant opposition within China and in the international community. Millions of people were displaced by and cultural and natural treasures lost beneath the reservoir that was created following the erection of the 185-metre- (607-foot-) high, some 2,300-metre- (7,500-foot-) long concrete wall across the Yangtze River. The dam is expected to produce some 18,000 megawatts of electricity (reducing coal usage by millions of tons per year) by 2009, after installation of most of the generating equipment, making it one of the largest hydroelectric producers in the world.

      Dams still unquestionably have an important role to play within the world's social, political, and economic framework. But for the foreseeable future, the specific character of that role and the way that dams will interrelate with the environment will likely remain a subject of contentious debate.

The modern dam

Basic problems in dam design

      Most modern dams are of two basic types: masonry (concrete) gravity designs and embankment (earthfill or rockfill) designs (earthfill dam). Masonry dams are typically used to block streams running through relatively narrow gorges, as in mountainous terrain; although the structures may be very high, the total amount of material required for such sites is limited. Embankment dams are often preferred to control rivers and streams passing through broad, wide valleys where only a very long barrier, requiring a great volume of material, will suffice. The choice of design depends on the geology and configuration of the site, the purposes of the dam, and cost factors related to material supply and site accessibility.

Site investigation and testing

      Investigation of a site for a dam includes sinking trial borings to determine geological strata. These borings can be supplemented by shafts and tunnels. In the shafts and tunnels, which are often used sparingly because of their cost, tests can be made to measure strength, elasticity, permeability, and prevailing stresses in rock strata, with particular attention given to the properties of thin partings, or walls, between the more massive beds. The presence in groundwater of chemical solutions harmful to the materials to be used in the construction of the dam must be assessed. Sources of construction materials (such as sand and rock aggregate needed in the production of concrete) often require exploration. As a design increases in height, the study of foundation conditions becomes more important because the pressures that will be exerted on the foundation increase proportionally.

      Model tests can play a major role in the structural, seismic, and hydraulic design of dams. Structural models can be particularly useful in analysis of arch dams and in verifying analytical stress calculations. Various materials have been used for model tests; for example, rubber was used on some early tests for Hoover Dam. The need for accurate reproduction of stress patterns in complex models is met by using material of low elasticity. In a sense, dams themselves are models for future design, and large-scale test dams were built as far back as the 1920s. The instruments built into them to record movements under load, strains (or deformations) that occur within various parts of the dam under reservoir loadings, temperature and pressure changes, and other factors are installed primarily to study the performance of the structure and to warn of possible emergencies, but their value in confirming design assumptions is important.

      Computers have permitted considerable advances in computational and analytic methods of design. Their ability to handle great volumes of data and to solve large sets of simultaneous equations containing many variables made the finite-element method practicable. In this method a complicated structure is divided into a number of separate equilibrium conditions, and strains (or deflections) are rendered compatible, thus leading to a complete analysis of stress and strain distribution throughout the structure. However, computers only model or approximate conditions as they exist in the real world and are not a substitute for judicious engineering judgment during the design process.

Problems of materials

      Each of the two basic dam materials, concrete and earthfill, possesses weaknesses that must be accommodated in the design process.

Weaknesses of concrete

      Unless reinforced with embedded steel bars, concrete is weak in tensile strength; that is, it can easily crack or be pulled apart. Concrete dams are therefore designed to place minimum tensile stress on the dam and instead to take advantage of concrete's great compressive strength. The chief constituent of concrete, cement, shrinks as it hardens, and it also releases heat as part of the chemical reactions that occur within the cement during the process of hydration (or hardening). Because of the massive quantities of concrete used in a large dam, shrinkage caused by cooling can present a serious cracking hazard.

      Various expedients are used to counter the likelihood of cracking, and much attention is often paid to reducing the amount of heat generated by the concrete. Concrete is usually cast (or poured) in separate, distinct blocks with heights (or “lifts”) of no more than about 1.5 metres (5 feet). Gaps between these blocks may be left to facilitate heat dispersal, and these gaps can be filled in later with cement grout. Low-heat cements may also be used, and these are specially blended so that the production of heat by the setting concrete is minimized. In the interior portions of a massive concrete dam, where impermeability or strength in resisting climatic and chemical deterioration are not particularly important attributes, the amount of cement in the concrete mix can be reduced; in turn, this reduces the heat generated. The cement content, and therefore the heat caused by hydrating, can also be reduced by using aggregate consisting of large stones. It is also possible to use fine-grained materials, such as fly ash (pulverized fuel), as filler, reducing the total cement volume in the concrete. Another technique is to use air-entraining agents that permit using a lower water-to-cement ratio in mixing the concrete. Techniques used to speed the cooling process include replacing some of the water in the mix by ice, circulating cool water through pipes placed within the concrete (this technology was used to great advantage during the construction of Hoover Dam), and extracting excess water from surfaces by vacuuming.

Weaknesses of earthfill (earthfill dam)

      Compared with concrete, soils (soil) and rock fragments lack strength, are much more permeable, and possess less resistance to deterioration and disturbance by flowing water. These disadvantages are compensated for by a much lower cost and by the ability of earthfill to adapt to deformation caused by movements in the dam foundation. This assumes, of course, sufficient usable soil or rockfill is available near the dam site. Earthfill is often quite economical, provided that a suitable “borrow” area can be utilized close to the construction site.

      Soil consists of solid particles with water and air in between. When the soil is compressed by loading, as occurs in dam construction, some drainage of air and water takes place, causing an increase in pressures between the solid particles. When there is a high rate of seepage, the soil tends to develop differential pressures and reach a condition called quick, in which it behaves as a fluid. Even if it does not reach this condition, there is often some weakening of its structure, and steps must be taken to counter this.

The earthquake problem

      Many large dams have been built in the seismically active regions of the world, including Japan, the western United States, New Zealand, the Himalayas, and the Middle East. In 1968 the Tokachi earthquake damaged 93 dams in Honshu, the main Japanese island; all were embankment dams of relatively small height.

      Despite a great deal of work on the distribution of seismic activity, the measurement of strong ground motions, and the response of dams to such motions, earthquake design of dams remains imprecise. The characteristics of strong ground motions at a given site cannot be predicted, and all types of dams possess some degree of freedom, imperfect elasticity, and imprecise damping. Nevertheless, computers and model testing offer the promise of future continued progress. It is now possible to calculate the response of a concrete dam to any specified ground motion; this has been done for the Tang-e Soleyman Dam in Iran and the Gariep Dam in South Africa.

      Because the foundations of concrete dams are typically keyed into bedrock, concrete dams usually do not experience great accelerations when shaken by earthquakes; for this reason, concrete dams have achieved an excellent safety record in terms of withstanding seismic forces. The safety record for embankment dams is also good, with the notable exception of earthfill dams constructed using hydraulic fill technology. Such dams retain a large quantity of water within their soil structure, which renders them vulnerable to liquefaction of the saturated soil when hit by a seismic shock. In 1971 the Van Norman Dam (or lower San Fernando Dam) in Los Angeles suffered partial collapse when a large quantity of hydraulic fill “slipped” during an earthquake. In recent years, engineers have also come to appreciate that large artificial reservoirs (reservoir) can trigger earthquakes that would not occur in the absence of the reservoirs. Reservoir-induced earthquakes may be caused by the extra weight of the water or, more typically, by increases in the groundwater pore pressure reducing the strength of the rock beneath the reservoir. These tremors are usually not large, but they can cause minor damage to communities in the region surrounding the dam.

Types of dams

The modern concrete dam

Concrete gravity dams

      Concrete gravity dams usually run in a straight line across a broad valley and resist the horizontal thrust of the retained water entirely by their own weight. The three main forces acting on a gravity dam are the thrust of the water stored in the reservoir, the weight of the dam, and the pressure exerted by the foundation. It is also essential to consider the thrust exerted on the upstream face by silt deposited in the reservoir or by ice on the water surface, the inertial forces that can be caused by seismic action, and, in particular, the buoyant uplift force of water seeping under the dam or into the horizontal joints.

      Uplift from seepage has caused sustained discussion among engineers dating back as far as the 1890s. Uplift calls for the greatest of care in design and construction. Where a dam is founded on solid rock, a simple downward projection of concrete into the rock will generally suffice to cut off seepage and eliminate uplift pressures. Usually, however, the rock foundation is permeable, sometimes to considerable depths, so construction of an absolutely reliable cutoff is either difficult or impossible. Reliance must then be placed on an extensive system of grouting the fissured rock and on relieving uplift pressures by means of drainage. Many dams possess both cutoffs and underdrainage.

      Another development in the construction of gravity dams is incorporation of posttensioned steel into the structure. For example, this helped reduce the cross section of Allt na Lairige Dam in Scotland to only 60 percent of that of a conventional gravity dam of the same height. A series of vertical steel rods near the upstream water face, stressed by jacks and securely anchored into the rock foundation, resists the overturning tendency of this more slender section. This system has also been used to raise existing gravity dams to a higher crest level, economically increasing the storage capacity of a reservoir.

      Of special interest are three concrete gravity dams that feature a straight sloping downstream face. Bratsk (Bratsk Dam), built across the Angara River at Irkutsk in Russia and completed in 1964, stands 125 metres (410 feet) above foundation level and, excluding the earthen side dams, is nearly 1,525 metres (5,000 feet) in length; it contains 4,500,000 cubic metres (5,900,000 cubic yards) of concrete. Grand Coulee Dam, completed in 1941, was built across the Columbia River in Washington state, U.S.; its main structure is 168 metres (550 feet) high and 1,592 metres (5,223 feet) long and contains almost 9,000,000 cubic metres (12,000,000 cubic yards) of concrete. Grande Dixence Dam in Switzerland, completed in 1962 across the narrower valley of the Dixence, has a crest length of 700 metres (2,296 feet) and contains approximately 5,960,000 cubic metres (7,790,000 cubic yards) of concrete; at 285 metres (935 feet) it was the highest dam in the world until the Nurek Dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan was completed in 1980, with a height of 317 metres (1,040 feet). By comparison, the Great Pyramid of Giza (Giza, Pyramids of) in Egypt contains 2,600,000 cubic metres (3,400,000 cubic yards) of masonry.

Concrete buttress and multiple-arch dams

      Unlike gravity dams, buttress dams do not rely entirely upon their own weight to resist the thrust of the water. Their upstream face, therefore, is not vertical but inclines about 25° to 45°, so the thrust of the water on the upstream face inclines toward the foundation. Embryonic buttresses existed in some Roman dams built in Spain, among them the Proserpina. As technology advanced, dams with thin buttresses of reinforced concrete supporting an inclined upstream face were built. In today's buttress dams, less account is taken of effecting maximum economy in the use of concrete. The trend is to reduce the area of costly formwork necessary and to avoid use of steel reinforcement. With greater heights, modern buttress dams are inevitably less slender.

      Several variations are possible in the design of the junction between the buttresses at the water face. Where no relative movement in the buttress foundations is anticipated, the design can link individual buttress heads rigidly, by means of arches (arch), to form a multiple-arch dam. A Canadian example of this type is the 214-metre- (703-foot-) high multiple-arch Daniel Johnson Dam on the Manicouagan River in Quebec. The dam, which was completed in 1968, uses a total of 14 buttresses in its crest length of 1,310 metres (4,297 feet); two very much larger buttresses support the structure over the original riverbed.

      Where buttress foundations might yield, the design must allow some freedom of movement between the heads of the buttresses. This is normally achieved by enlarging the heads until they are almost in contact and then joining them with flexible seals. Thus joined, the heads present a solid face to the water. Such a design was used in the construction of the Farahnaz Pahlavi Dam in Iran. Built for the Tehrān Regional Water Board in 1967, this dam has a maximum height of 107 metres (351 feet) and a crest length of nearly 360 metres (1,181 feet).

      A comparison between the Daniel Johnson multiple-arch dam and the Farahnaz Pahlavi buttress dam shows that the buttresses have to be placed much closer together than is necessary with a multiple-arch dam. This allows each buttress to be more slender, however, and spreads the load more evenly over the foundation. The detailed design at the bottom of the Farahnaz Pahlavi buttresses was necessitated by weak foundation conditions at the site and by the need to limit the length of each buttress to reduce its response to seismic action. By contrast, the Daniel Johnson buttresses could be founded individually, exploiting fully an important advantage of buttress dams over gravity dams—that of smaller uplift forces.

Arch dams

      The advantages of building a curved dam—thus using the water pressure to keep the joints in the masonry closed—were appreciated as early as Roman times. An arch dam is a structure curving upstream, where the water thrust is transferred either directly to the valley sides or indirectly through concrete abutments. Theoretically, the ideal constant angle arch in a V-shaped valley has a central angle of 133° of curvature. This led to the development of the “constant-angle” (or variable radius) arch dam, first built at Salmon Creek in Alaska in 1913–14.

      An arch dam is a thick shell structure that derives strength from its curved profile. Dependent for its strength upon effective support at its abutments, its very strength and rigidity make it sensitive to movements at the abutments. Only favourable sites providing sound rock are suitable for arch dams.

      The great reserves of strength inherent in an arch dam were dramatically displayed in 1963 when the reservoir behind Vaiont Dam in Italy was virtually destroyed by a landslide. Vaiont, at that time the second highest dam in the world, was built across a narrow gorge on limestone foundations so that the crest, 262 metres (858 feet) above the valley bottom, was only 190 metres (623 feet) in length. Some large-scale instability in the mountainside above the reservoir had been observed earlier by the engineers during filling; they were allowed to proceed very slowly, and three years later, on Oct. 9, 1963, with filling still incomplete, about 240 million cubic metres (314 million cubic yards) of soil and rock slid down into the reservoir, sending a tremendous volume of water to a height of 260 metres (853 feet) on the opposite side of the valley. The flood overtopped the dam to a depth of 100 metres (328 feet) and surged down the valley, destroying several villages and causing large loss of life. Yet only superficial damage was caused to the dam, which is about 3.4 metres (11.2 feet) thick at its crest.

Embankment dams (earthfill dam)

General characteristics

      Early embankments of earthfill or rockfill were often built as simple homogeneous structures, with the same material used throughout. No effort was made at first to subdivide the dam into separate zones with the best-suited material in each zone. Like a concrete gravity dam, the weight of an embankment dam deflects the horizontal thrust of the water pressure down to the foundation. The resultant pressures on the foundation must not cause excessive deformation, as this will result in failure.

      Unlike concrete, embankment dam materials possess only limited resistance to water penetration. The rate of penetration depends on the pressures exerted by the water in the reservoir, the length of seepage paths through the dam, and the permeability of the material of construction. Soils and rock range from substantially impermeable clays through silts and sands to coarse-graded gravels and rock fragments that possess little resistance to the movement of water. The range is extremely wide; the seepage rate through clean gravel is 10,000 times that through sand, 10,000,000 times that through silt, and 100,000,000 times that through dense clay.

      An embankment dam must be stable, and its side slopes must not slip or slide. In addition, liquefaction of the soils must not occur, and erosion of the soils—as a result of water overtopping the crest, wave action on the upstream face, or seepage washing out the finer material through the coarser—must be avoided. As with a concrete dam, seepage of water from the reservoir through the foundation and under the actual embankment also must be controlled in order to ensure safety.

Potential weakness

  There are three parts of a dam where weakening of the soil structure and liquefactions can occur. In the top figure—> the pattern of seepage through a homogeneously filled dam is shown. Near the downstream toe, the gradient of the pore water pressures is steep, and constraints holding the soil structure together are low; this is one area of weakness in an embankment dam. One solution is to introduce drainage as indicated in the bottom figure—>, where the area of steep seepage gradients has been moved to where the soil is constrained near the centre of the dam.

      A second area of potential weakness is the upstream face, when the water in the reservoir is rapidly drawn down. If the pore water pressures cannot adjust themselves fast enough to this change in the free water surface in the reservoir, severe seepage gradients begin; these can cause failure. A zone of freely draining fill of coarser grading can be placed on the upstream face to counter this.

      Water seepage from the reservoir through the foundations under the dam is another potential weakness. Because of their great base widths, embankment dams can be constructed on unfavourable sites, such as open-joined rock or weaker and possibly locally permeable clay. It is necessary, however, either to check or to harmlessly drain away the seepage water that would otherwise weaken the downstream parts of the dam and, in extreme cases, cause it to fail. Several countermeasures, possibly in combination, can be employed: the foundation can be grouted or a cutoff trench excavated and backfilled with an impermeable material; a drainage blanket can be constructed at the base of the downstream part of the dam, or individual drainage wells or galleries can be excavated; the length of the seepage paths under the dam can be extended by means of an impermeable blanket laid on the upstream side of the dam; or additional free-draining fill can be placed at the downstream toe of the dam.

Construction techniques

 Today all large embankment dams have a core of lower permeability built near their centre. The width of the core is restricted to that necessary to lower sufficiently the pore pressures in the downstream part of the dam. Although the top of the core must be at the crest of the dam, the core itself need not be vertical. On some rockfill dams the core can slope forward to an extreme position where it lies on the upstream face.

      Where seepage is inevitable, the use of finely graded core material in proximity to coarser material is avoided. Bands of intermediately graded material must be inserted to prevent the finely graded material from leaching through the coarse zones. Filter zones are graded so each band is four to five times coarser than the preceding band.

      A typical section of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, which was completed in 1970, shows an embankment 111 metres (365 feet) high built of dune sand and rockfill on a very permeable foundation of deep alluvium. There the central clay core is vertical; this barrier to seepage is extended to the original riverbed as grouted sand and below the riverbed to a depth of 225 metres (740 feet) as a grout curtain. A corrugated blanket of clay extends upstream within the dam from the base of the core. Within the upstream and downstream cofferdams (cofferdam), partly of rockfill, much of the filling is of compacted sand. Filter layers separate the cofferdam filler from the outer layers of freely draining rockfill. Drainage wells are observed below the downstream toe. The early stages of construction were carried out under deep water—hence the use of grouted coarse sand between the clay core and the grout curtain.

 Until completion of the 317-metre- (1,040-foot-) high Nurek Dam in Tajikistan in 1980, Oroville Dam in California (completed in 1968) was the highest embankment dam in the world, at 236 metres (774 feet). Unlike the Aswan High Dam, Oroville was not built on deep permeable alluvium, nor was it necessary to place part of the fill underwater. One unusual feature is the concrete block at the base of the sloping core designed to fill in the incised gorge of the Feather River Canyon. The grout curtain, compared with that of the Aswan High Dam, is of nominal depth. On each side of the sloping core, transition zones separate the core from the main mass of more pervious filling. The downstream transition zone is backed by a curtain drain of selected pervious material connected to a drainage blanket on the downstream side. The upstream face of the dam is protected against wave action by a 1-metre (3-foot) layer of broken stone (riprap).

      Efficient compacting of soils requires maximum density of dry particles consistent with an economic number of passes of the compacting plant. The process of compacting a soil by kneading it involves expelling as much of the air as practicable; water content is not normally much reduced. The optimum water content for maximum dry density—which results in maximum strength—can be achieved for a given amount of work done on the soil in compaction. In arid climates, water must often be added to excavated soils. In temperate climates, however, water content is usually too high, except in deeply excavated and well-drained soils.

      Normally, soils are placed in embankment dams in thin layers individually compacted by rolling. Finer soils, such as those used in cores, may be harrowed before rolling. Coarser soils, including rock fragments, are compacted by vibration and then rolled. Coarse rock fragments (rockfill) are compacted to a limited extent by impact on being dumped from the construction plant. In the process of hydraulic filling, sands are dredged from borrow pits, transported in water by pipelines to the filling area, and deposited there by draining off the surplus water. Hydraulic filling is widely practiced in maritime works, and it has also been used for embankment dams. In the early 20th century it was a widely used construction technique for dams, but the practice fell out of favour after the Fort Peck Dam across the Missouri River in northeastern Montana experienced a partial failure during construction in the late 1930s.

Auxiliary structures

Spillways (spillway)

      Serious consequences can follow if a dam is overtopped. Disaster is likely in the case of an embankment dam not designed to permit uncontrolled flow of water on its downstream slope. In March 1960 the partially completed embankment dam at Orós, Braz., was accidentally overtopped during a period of unexpectedly heavy rainfall. Despite heroic efforts to avert disaster, the water level rose nearly 1 metre (3 feet) above crest level, eroded about half the fill in the dam, and cut a deep breach about 200 metres (660 feet) wide in the structure. Although there was time to evacuate 100,000 people living downstream, half were rendered homeless and about 50 perished. Spillage over a concrete gravity dam is also serious, because the floodwater erodes the foundations at the downstream toe. Arch dams possess greater resistance to failure after overtopping.

 Flood hydrology is a difficult subject to precisely quantify, but much effort is being made to establish relationships between rainfall and river discharge. Although statistical methods cannot determine the maximum possible flood, they can indicate the probability of a specified flow being exceeded in a particular period. For example, engineers found that, in constructing the Kariba Dam over the Zambezi River on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, analyses of the available records of river discharge yielded the estimate that a flood of 7,600 cubic metres (9,950 cubic yards) per second should be expected once in four years. During the first year of construction on the riverbed, a flood of 8,500 cubic metres (11,100 cubic yards) per second was experienced, and in the second year the Zambezi discharged 16,200 cubic metres (21,200 cubic yards) per second.

      In these circumstances, civil engineers attach much importance to the design of spillways on dams. Inadequate spillway capacity caused failure by overtopping for many older earthen dams built before modern flood data became available.

      Four general aspects of spillways are worth noting. First, the uncontrolled discharge of surplus water past the dam should be automatic and not dependent upon human control. Second, the spillway intake should be wide enough so that the largest floods can pass without increasing the water level in the reservoir enough to cause a nuisance to upstream property owners. Third, the rate of floodwater discharge should not increase much above that experienced before the construction of the dam. An increase in discharge can cause flood problems downstream, but a dam usually reduces the peak discharge rate because of the lag effect caused by a flood passing through the reservoir. Fourth, floodwater discharged over the height of a dam can be destructive to the dam structure itself and to the riverbed unless its energy is controlled and dissipated in harmless turbulence.

      With embankment dams, a separate spillway structure is normally constructed to one side of the dam. With concrete gravity dams, the sloping downstream face of the structure can often serve as the basis for the spillway. Water flowing down a spillway can travel at very high speeds—about 160 km (100 miles) per hour in the case of a dam 100 metres (330 feet) high—and form a standing wave where it enters the riverbed; it proceeds downstream at lower mean velocity but in a highly turbulent state. Grand Coulee Dam utilizes a spillway of this type. An obstruction known as a kicker, placed at the toe of the dam to project the water slightly upward, can move farther downstream the area in which erosion of the riverbed is most intense. With higher dams it is possible to deflect the jet of spilling water from a level above the base of the dam; this is known as a ski-jump spillway.

      Spillways need not be open to the atmosphere. Shaft and tunnel spillways can carry away the water to a point downstream of the dam. At the upstream end, the intake can be self-priming siphons or bell-mouthed drop shafts; the latter are also known as morning-glory spillways.

      With arch dams it is convenient to construct gated openings (floodgate) in the shell structure at some distance below the crest of the dam, ensuring that the discharging jets fall well clear downstream. A line of six such gates is used in the design of Kariba Dam.

      Spillways constructed to one side of earthen dams are featured in the design of Oroville Dam and of Mangla Dam in Pakistan. The spillway at Mangla discharges 28,000 cubic metres (36,600 cubic yards) of water per second; the upper stilling basin has the dimensions of an Olympic Games stadium, including its grandstands.

Gates (gate)

      In addition to spillways, openings through dams are also required for drawing off water for irrigation and water supply, for ensuring a minimum flow in the river for riparian interests downstream, for generating power, and for evacuating water and silt from the reservoir. These gated openings normally are fitted with coarse screens at the upstream ends to prevent entry of floating and submerged debris. Provision for cleaning these screens is essential.

      Several forms of gates have been developed. The simplest and oldest form is a vertical-lift gate that, sliding or rolling against guides, can be raised to allow water to flow underneath. Radial, or tainter, gates are similar in principle but are curved in vertical section to better resist water pressure. Tilting gates consist of flaps held by hinges along their lower edges that permit water to flow over the top when they are lowered.

      Drum gates can control the reservoir level upstream to precise levels automatically and without the assistance of mechanical power. One drum gate design consists of a shaped-steel caisson held in position by hinges mounted on the crest of the dam and supported in a flotation chamber constructed immediately downstream of the crest. Water pressure in the reservoir and buoyancy of the caisson in the flotation chamber hold the caisson in rotational equilibrium. Raising or lowering the water level in the flotation chamber causes the caisson to rotate in the same direction, thus reducing or increasing flow from the reservoir over the gate. This action can be linked to and operated automatically by a float control device in the reservoir. Two drum gates are installed at Pitlochry Dam in Scotland.

Reservoirs (reservoir)

      Modern engineers have learned the value of giving attention early to potential problems in reservoir maintenance. Sediment in rivers seriously influences the effective life of a reservoir and therefore the financing of a dam. Some modern dams have been rendered useless for storing water because the reservoir has filled with silt. In many others, effective storage capacity has been seriously reduced. At the Nile barrages, the heavy silt-laden floodwater is allowed to pass through the sluices so that only the cleaner water at the end of the flood season is stored.

Fish passes

 For centuries people have appreciated that dams can have dramatic effects on fish populations, but concern about this issue increased significantly starting in the 1930s, with the construction of major dams along the Columbia River and its tributaries in the Pacific Northwest. Success in accommodating fish runs has been achieved with salmon in Scotland and on certain rivers in the United States and Canada. Notable examples of conservation measures are to be found at Bonneville Dam, along the lower Columbia River, and at many dams in Scotland.

      Adult salmon swimming to their spawning grounds upstream must be prevented by screens from entering the turbine tailraces at power stations and induced instead to enter a fish pass that allows them to surmount the dam. Similarly, young salmon must be allowed to pass a dam safely on their journey downstream to feeding grounds in the ocean. Young salmon are surprisingly insensitive to sudden changes of pressure and have been known to pass safely through turbines operating at heads of up to 49 metres (160 feet). Nevertheless, it is preferable to induce them to use the fish passes.

      Fish passes usually take the form of fish ladders and fish locks. A fish ladder is utilized at Pitlochry Dam in Scotland; it consists of a series of stepped pools through which water is continuously discharged during the migratory seasons. The individual pools may be separated by a series of low weirs or linked by short inclined underwater pipes to provide the necessary steps of less than a metre in water levels. Sometimes both weirs and pipes are provided.

      The Borland fish lock was developed in Scotland as an alternative to fish ladders. It operates on the same intermittent principle as a ship lock but is constructed as a closed conduit. Intermittent closure of the gates at the bottom causes the continuous flow through the lock to fill the conduit at intervals, which allows fish waiting in the bottom chamber to be raised through the height of the dam. The lock also serves at other seasons to flush young salmon down past the dam.

      Unfortunately, as more dams were built along some rivers, the success of fish ladders and other technologies designed to obviate the effects of dams proved difficult to sustain, and migrating fish began to experience dramatic population declines on several rivers. The most notable of these declines came on the Lower Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River), where a series of dams built in the 1960s and '70s to generate hydroelectric power and to make the port of Lewiston, Idaho, accessible to ocean-going barges were tagged by environmentalists as causing the destruction (and possible extinction) of many native spawning fish. In the 1990s these dams on the Lower Snake River were the focus of widely publicized dam-removal initiatives. In other parts of the United States, relatively small dams (most notably the Edwards Dam across the lower Kennebec River in Maine) have been removed from rivers in order to help revitalize spawning fish populations.

J. Guthrie Brown Donald C. Jackson

Additional Reading

Donald C. Jackson (ed.), Dams: Studies in the History of Civil Engineering (1997), analyzes dam building from ancient times through the 20th century. Nicholas J. Schnitter, A History of Dams: The Useful Pyramids (1994), chronicles the construction and use of dams from ancient civilization to modern times. Norman Smith, A History of Dams (1971), contains an outstanding detailed record of ancient dams. Two histories of individual dams are Anne D. Rassweiler, The Generation of Power: The History of Dneprostroi (1988), providing the political background to the dam's development; and Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride, Building Hoover Dam (1993), an oral history of those involved in the project. David P. Billington and Donald C. Jackson, Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics (2006), describes the history of the most important monumental dams built in the United States during the 1930s. Donald C. Jackson, Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the American West (1995), documents the history of the most prolific designer of multiple arch dams. Mark W.T. Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (1994), explains the relationship of dams to the 20th-century environmental movement.Alfred R. Golzé (ed.), Handbook of Dam Engineering (1977), is a manual of design and construction. Earlier works are J. Guthrie Brown (ed.), Hydro-Electric Engineering Practice, 3 vol., 2nd ed. (1964–70), a comprehensive textbook dealing principally with British and European practice; James L. Sherard et al., Earth and Earth-Rock Dams (1963), on the design and construction of foundations and embankments; and Calvin Victor Davis and Kenneth E. Sorenson (eds.), Handbook of Applied Hydraulics, 3rd ed. (1969, reprinted 1984), a classic work on the basic principles of hydraulic engineering and the design of hydraulic structure. J. Laginha Serafim and R.W. Clough (eds.), Arch Dams (1990), collects papers from an international workshop on this type of dam.J. Guthrie Brown Donald C. Jackson

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