Internal erosion causes about half of all failures of water-retaining earth embankment dams. Similar statistics apply to levees. Internal erosion occurs when the hydraulic loads imposed by water seeping through the pores or flowing through cracks and openings in the soils in embankments and their foundations generate erosive forces sufficient to overcome the resistance to erosion of those soils. The knowledge of internal erosion processes has...

Lawn Lake Dam, located in Rocky Mountain National Park failed suddenly and catastrophically on a sunny day in July 1982, and resulted in over $30 million dollars in damage and the loss of 3 lives. This webinar will explore the history of the dam, construction features responsible for the failure, the failure event and emergency response, the long legal process to assign liability for the failure and the overall impacts to the Town of Estes Par...

The on-demand course is intended to give the participants an understanding of cavitation on chutes and spillways. The course will be introduced with a video of a case study that illustrates some of the fundamentals of cavitation and an explanation of why cavitation causes damage. Following the video, a Power Point presentation will discuss the beneficial effects of aeration on preventing damage due to cavitation. The participants will be guide...

This on-demand webinar will start with the most basic seepage concepts and finalize on actual evaluation of piezometric data for earth dams and levees. Simple basic seepage ideas using high graphic illustrations will be the means to teach all concepts in this webinar. Also, numerous difficult concepts will be fully explained using high graphic simple illustrations. For example, course will also provide unique insight into how seepage changes w...

This course is intended to provide guidance on the proper selection and installation of waterstops for hydraulic structures. This course will discuss the various types and applications of waterstops and discuss the necessary design constraints such as site constraints, joint types, head pressures, and concrete clearances and cover. The course will emphasize the need for thorough structure detailing to ensure proper clearances and placement loc...

Analyses of expected seismic performance of earthen dams subject to potential liquefaction hazard are routinely performed for high hazard dams. The State of Practice has increasingly evolved from simplified methods to the use of fully-coupled seismic pore pressure generation and nonlinear seismic deformation analyses (NDA) using either finite difference or finite element analysis frameworks. To evaluate the accuracy and reliability of these ND...

WinDAM software estimates the erosion and breach outflows from overtopping flows and internal erosion flows affecting earthen embankments. This webinar will provide an overview of the WinDAM model and the various inputs needed. The webinar will also cover output from WinDAM. The webinar will target users and designers more than researchers. Five Learning Objectives of This Course: How could overtopping affect my earthen dam? How could internal...

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...

The overwhelming majority of dams in the world, and also in the United States, are embankment dams. This webinar is intended as an overview of embankment dams, to serve as an introduction for those relatively new to dam safety and a refresher for the more experienced practitioner. The webinar will begin with a review of the history of embankment dams from antiquity to today and comments on today’s inventory of dams. Types of embankment d...

The most common deficiency at dams in North America is inadequate spillway capacity. Inadequate spillway capacity can result in overtopping of a dam during flood events. This is especially a concern for embankment dams where overtopping of the dam embankment can cause breaching of the dam and uncontrolled release of the impounded water. This failure mode accounts for more than 40 percent of recent dam failures. A broad overview of the many app...