Hydraulics of Rubber Dam Overflow : a Simple Design Approach

Rubber dams have been used for the past 40 years in river and coastal engineering applications, in Australia and overseas. Despite the increasing interest for rubber dams, little information is available on their hydraulic performances. The overflow characteristics of inflated rubber dams are re-investigated. New analytical calculations provide information on the wall pressure distribution and on the nappe trajectory. The calculations are compared with over 160 new experiments. Altogether the results provide a new method to predict overflow characteristics and new design guidelines are derived for the optimum location of the deflector.