Author(s): Aureli Francesca; Maranzoni Andrea; Mignosa Paolo; Ziveri Chiara
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Dam; Hydraulic hazard; Dam-break; Civil protection; Rapidly varying flow
Abstract: The estimation of the flood wave consequent to the hypothetical breaking of a dam is necessary for flood hazard assessment and for the development of civil protection plans. With the aim of providing a simple, although realistic, evaluation of the dam-break wave, the dimensionless solution proposed by Hunt for a rectangular frictionless sloping channel is here generalized to a channel characterized by a cross section expressed as a monomial function of water depth. The proposed methodology is capable of taking into account the most common shapes of natural valleys together with the reservoir storage-depth curve and the inertial effects. Two applications of dam-break analysis on important reservoirs in northern Italy were performed to validate the proposed methodology. The investigated reservoirs are significantly different in terms of the maximum retained water volume and the dam dimensions and features. The results show that the proposed methodology is capable of evaluating flow rate hydrographs at the dam site that are in a good agreement with those computed by a 2D finite volume numerical model. The moderate computational and data collecting effort makes the proposed methodology a valuable alternative to other commonly adopted procedures for the computation of the flow rate hydrograph consequent to a hypothetical dam-break in natural valleys.
Year: 2007