dam engineering

Indicate Impending Dam Engineering Failure
Geotechnical dam engineering facilities can fail with catastrophic consequences to life and property. Such failures may be the result of excessive loads, design errors, construction deficiencies, unknown or different conditions, deterioration, operational errors or intentional action. Geotechnical instrumentation has been widely used to monitor performance and detect the onset of failure. Such monitoring may have different purposes. It may be to issue a warning to evacuate people and move equipment. It may be to initiate action to forestall the failure. It may be to provide feedback as part of a process leading to intentional failure.

Geotechnical instrumentation programs may save lives by giving advanced warning of an impending dam engineering failure in time for people to get to a safe area. Instrumentation saves money and reduces risk by decreasing the likelihood of an unexpected failure destroying the project. A good instrumentation program may reveal an unknown condition early enough that changes can be made which greatly reduce the risk of dam engineering failure.

Provide a Warning
Geotechnical instrumentation systems may be installed to provide a warning that some dam engineering indicator of performance is exceeding acceptable limits. These instruments may be made a part of an automated system that automatically initiates the warning. A tiltmeter might be used to warn of a sudden movement across an existing shear zone. A piezometer might warn of excessive pore pressures in the downstream toe area of a dam that might become unstable and threaten the stability of the dam. Flow meters might warn of significant changes in the volume of flow.