Recently the design flows of many dams have been re-evaluated, resulting in spills often larger than the original ones. In many cases, occurrence of revised flows would result in dam overtopping because of insufficient storage and spillway capacity of reservoirs. Embankment dams whilst common are more likely to fail than other dam types when overtopped in an uncontrolled manner because of breac...

The relativistic time dilatation effect and Einstein's second postulate of special relativity are used to analyse train/embankment thought expriments, both Einstein's original one, and an extension where observers on two trains moving at different speeds, as well as on the embankment, are considered. Whereas the relativistic analysis of Einstein's experiment shows, in contradiction to Einstein'...

Worldwide 83% of large dams are embankment structures (ICOLD, 1984), and the proportion is even greater for small dams. Embankment overtopping and breach is an important issue, and the Discusser congratulates the Author for his worthwhile contribution which complements the comprehensive study of Coleman et al. (2002). This discussion is focused on the breach development stage. It is shown that ...

Horizontal deformations can cause damage to objects adjacent to a newly constructed embankment. A tool has been developed to determine in an early state of a project if such a risk exists. The basis of this tool is an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). ANNs are particularly suited to find a relationship between an input and an output parameter, even if it is a very complex one. With this in mind,...

Aging infrastructure in the US has gained quite a bit of attention in the past decade. Being one type of a critical infrastructure, embankment dams in the US require significant investment to upgrade the deteriorated parts. Due to limited budgets, understanding the behavior of structures over time through risk assessment is essential to prioritize dams. During the risk assessment for embankment...

One of the main steps in road and railway embankment restoration is the spreading of previously removed topsoil, which provides an input of seeds, organic matter and microorganisms and encourages the establishment of a vegetation cover, essential to stabilise the embankment and blend it with the landscape. However, topsoil is a scarce resource, prompting the search for economic alternatives wit...

Laboratory and field tests have shown that accelerated compression of peat soils occurs in response to moderate heating and an effective overconsolidation is produced on subsequent cooling. This phenomenon has been termed thermal precompression. In this study, long-term laboratory and field tests were conducted to investigate secondary compression behavior of peat as a function of stress and te...

To Lich River (TLR) system receives wastewaters from a population of nearly two million people and 100 manufactories of five industrial zones in inner city Hanoi, Vietnam. To improve quality of TLR, the embankment was carried out in 1998 and finished in 2002, resulted in width of 20 45 m, depth of 2 4 m, and maximum water flow capacity of 30 m/s. Water and sediment quality indices based on heav...

Dam breach width significantly influences peak breach outflow, inundation levels, and flood arrival time, but uncertainties inherent in the prediction of its value for embankment dams make its accurate estimation a challenging task in dam risk assessments. The key focus of this paper is to provide a fuzzy logic (FL) model for estimating the average breach width of embankment dams as an alternat...

some heavy clay soils of the A6 and A7 types with tar emul­ sions and cutbacks on an experimental subgrade stabilization during the summer of 1937, we found that this type of soil stabilization presents some very different problems from those of soil-aggregate stabilization. Soil-cement stabilization, as described by Mr. Myers, also presents some interesting problems. According to its claims, t...