Abstract
The Vajont landslide took place in northern Italy on October 9th 1963 and caused a huge impulse wave to travel along the artificial reservoir and overtop the dam, flooding and devastating a considerable area along the Piave riverbed. In this event about 1900 people died, 1700 of them in the Piave Valley alone. The water depth of the wave in some points exceeded 50 m. Although the phenomenon is clearly tridimensional, the application of a pure 3D hydraulic numerical model to this wide and natural territory is very complicated. Recently, the authors have presented a numerical model of the impulse wave that wasted the Vajont basin as a consequence of the landslide Bosa and Petti (Environ Model Softw 26:406–418, 2011). In this paper, a 2DH numerical model has been applied to study the effects of the overtopping wave in the Piave Valley, in order to verify if the simplifications assumed by a 2DH model still make it possible to describe the evolution of the wave in the proper manner.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alcrudo F, Mulet J (2007) Description of the Tous Dam break case study (Spain). J Hydraul Res 45:45–57
Begnudelli L, Sanders BF (2007) Simulation of the St.Francis dam-break flood. J Eng Mech 133:1200–1212
Bondesan A, Caniato G, Vallerani F, Zanetti M (2004) Il Piave. CIERRE, Sommacampagna (VR), (in italian)
Bosa S, Petti M (2011) Shallow water numerical model of the wave generated by the Vajont landslide. Environ Model Softw 26:406–418. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2010.10.001
Carloni GC, Mazzanti R (1964) Rilevamento geologico della frana del Vaiont. In: Selli R et al. Giornale di Geologia, S.2, Vol.32/1 (in italian)
Comune di Erto e Casso, Parco Naturale Dolomiti Friulane (2002) Materiali della mostra permanente del centro visite di Erto (in italian)
Costanzo C, Macchione F (2006) Two-dimensional numerical simulation of flood propagation in presence of buildings. RiverFlow 1:291–301
Datei C (2003) Vajont. La storia idraulica. Cortina, Padova (in italian)
Gallegos HA, Schubert JE, Sanders BF (2009) Two-dimensional, high-resolution modeling of urban dam-break flooding: a case study of Baldwin Hills, California. Advances in Water Resources 32:1323–1335
Genevois R, Ghirotti M (2005) The 1963 Vaiont Landslide. Giornale di Geologia Applicata 1:41–52
Hervouet J-M (2000) A high resolution 2-D dam-break model using parallelization. Hydrol Process 14:2211–2230
Liao CB, Wu MS, Liang SJ (2007) Numerical simulation of a dam break for an actual river terrain environment. Hydrol Process 21:447–460
Liggett JA (1994) Fluid mechanics. McGraw-Hill
Longarone (2008) Testimonianze dirette di persone che hanno vissuto in prima persona l’evento del ottobre 1963 (in italian)
Petaccia G, Natale L, Savi F (2008). Simulation of the Sella Zerbino catastrophic dam break. ‘River Flow 2008’, International Conference IAHR, KUBABA Congress Department and Travel Services, 601–607
Petaccia G, Soares-Frazão S, Savi F, Natale L, Zech Y (2010) Simplified versus detailed two dimensional approaches to transient flow modeling in urban areas. ASCE JHE 136(4):262–266
Petti M, Bosa S (2007) Accurate shock-capturing finite volume method for advection-dominated flow and pollution transport. Computers & Fluids 36:455–466
Pilotti M, Maranzoni A, Tomirotti M, Valerio G (2011) 1923 Gleno dam break: case study and numerical modeling. J Hydraul Eng 137(4):480–492
Reberschak M (2003). Il grande Vajont. CIERRE, Verona (in italian)
Rossi D, Semenza E (1965) Carte geologiche del versante settentrionale del M.Toc e zone limitrofe, prima e dopo il fenomeno di scivolamento del 9 ottobre 1963. Scala 1:5000. Ist. Geologia Università di Ferrara. 2 Maps
Schnitter G (1964) Die Katastrophe von Vaiont in Oberitalien. Wasser- und Energiewirtschaft 56(2/3):61–69 (in german)
Shi Y, Nyugen KD (2008) A projection method-based model for dam- and dyke-break flows using an unstructured finite-volume technique: Applications to the Malpasset dam break (France) and to the flood diversion in the Red River Basin (Vietnam). Int J Numer Meth Fluids 56:1505–1512
Slingerland R, Voight B (1979) Occurrences, proprieties and predictive models of landslide-generated impulse wave. Rockslides and avalanches 2:317–397, Voight B. ed. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Soares-Frazão S, Lhomme J, Guinot V, Zech Y (2008) Two-dimensional shallow water model with porosity for urban flood modeling. J Hydraul Res 46(1):45–64
Valiani A, Caleffi V, Zanni A (2002) Case study: Malpasset dam-break simulation using a two-dimensional finite volume method. J Hydraul Eng 128:460–472
Zanfron B (2006) Vajont 9 ottobre 1963 – cronaca di una catastrofe. Tipolitografia Print House, Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL) (in italian)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This paper was originally presented at the EWRA2011 conference Catania June 29th – July 2nd 2011.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bosa, S., Petti, M. A Numerical Model of the Wave that Overtopped the Vajont Dam in 1963. Water Resour Manage 27, 1763–1779 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0162-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0162-6