This webinar will review field inspection of concrete structures for dams, water conveyances, and levees. Specific topics to be covered will include foundation preparation, reinforcing steel inspection, embedded items, formwork, concrete joints, waterstop installation, and concrete mixes and placement. Five learning objectives of this webinar: Pre-construction preparation that should be completed prior to the start of construction of a concret...

To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. This 2.5-day introductory course is designed to be a participatory, interactive workshop, which will cover the basic elements required to understand and evaluate seepage-related issues for earth dams. The first day begins with providing an understanding of why seepage mechanisms in earth dams are important to dam safety. Discussion...

To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. The objective of this course will be to provide a comprehensive presentation of the significant principles and concepts of soil mechanics to the participants. The material will be presented with emphasis on the basic soil mechanics principles prerequisite to further study for design or rehabilitation of earth embankment dams. This...

To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. This course provides broad coverage of stability analysis for embankment dams. Topics addressed in the course include soil stress-strain behavior, shear strength selection, field and laboratory testing methods, slope stability analysis methods, slope stability analysis loading cases, seepage as related to stability analysis, and st...

Five Learning Objectives of This Course: Scour of rock is a dam safety concern that requires meaningful quantification It is possible to predict the scour potential of rock using data normally available for dam design High-resolution remote sensing and monitoring can facilitate improved scour assessment Course attendees should develop an understanding of processes and key drivers/controls for scour of rocks Course attendees should be able to e...

This webinar will review the design and construction of filters and drains for embankment dams. Specific topics covered will include 1) principles of filters and drains, 2) locations and configurations of filters and drains in embankment dams (for both new dams and dam rehabilitations) , 3) design guidelines for filters and drains, 4) evaluations of filters and drains in existing embankment dams, and 5) practical considerations for design and...

This webinar will provide an overview of multiple dam design and dam safety resources available from the USDA of Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The overview will include a presentation on the NRCS history of building dams and dam safety. The policy presentation will focus on key dam design and dam safety elements in the NRCS General Manual, the National Engineering Manual and NRCS directives process. The presentation on NRCS de...

Potential failure modes analyses (PFMA) was first used in dam safety over twenty years ago and although thousands of PFMA workshops have been conducted since it was first introduced, the use and application of PFMAs is still mostly limited to larger federal agencies and occasionally by others on larger projects. PFMA is a tool and a framework to evaluate dam and levee safety. It has fundamentally changed the way many now approach assessing and...

This course will provide a thorough overview of the fundamentals of specifying the fresh and hardened properties of concrete mixes; the review of applicable codes for concrete hydraulic structures; the design philosophy and methodology of reinforced concrete hydraulic structures; and issues associated with the construction process. The course will include actual design examples of frequently used hydraulic structures utilizing current design c...

Dam-related problems include blockage of fish migrations, drowning hazards, failure hazards, reservoir sedimentation, habitat loss, and tailwater erosion. Some environmental problems can only be addressed through dam removal while other issues, where removal is not a viable option, can be remediated by dam modification and nature-like fish passage. Traditional fish passage projects have typically focused solely on passage of single or few lar...