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Dam-Breach Floods

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Hydrology of Disasters

Part of the book series: Water Science and Technology Library ((WSTL,volume 24))

Abstract

Dams provide society with essential benefits such as water supply, flood control, recreation, hydropower, and irrigation. However, catastrophic flooding occurs when a dam fails and the impounded water escapes through the breach to cause death and destruction of people and their developments existing in the downstream valley. Usually, the magnitude of the flow greatly exceeds all previous floods and the response time available for warning the populace is much shorter than for precipitation-runoff floods. According to reports by the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD, 1973) and the United States Committee on Large Dams in cooperation with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE/USCOLD, 1975), about 38 percent of all dam failures are caused by overtopping of the dam due to inadequate spillway capacity and by spillways being washed out during large inflows to the reservoir from heavy precipitation runoff. About 33 percent of dam failures are caused by seepage or piping through the dam or along internal conduits, while about 23 percent of the failures are associated with foundation problems, and the remaining failures are due to slope embankment slides, damage or liquefaction of earthen dams from earthquakes, and overtopping of the dam by landslide-generated waves within the reservoir. Middlebrooks (1952) describes earthen dam failures that occurred within the United States prior to 1951. Johnson and Illes (1976) summarize 300 dam failures throughout the world.

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  1. D. L. Fread
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Water Resources Program, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Louisiana State University, 70803-6405, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

    Vijay P. Singh

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Fread, D.L. (1996). Dam-Breach Floods. In: Singh, V.P. (eds) Hydrology of Disasters. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8680-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8680-1_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

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