EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF RESERVOIR SHAPE FACTOR ON DAM-BREAK FLOW CHARACTERISTICS

Flooding induced by large dam breaks causes severe and heavy damages to human lives and civil facilities. Knowing the volume and direction of the ood spreading, due to the breaking of a certain dam, in advance, may allow us to specify the areas prone to ood damage and help the institutions in charge to be on full alert before catastrophe occurs. The main aim of this research is to study the in uence of the shape factor of a dam reservoir on a ood hydrograph, induced due to a dam break, by means of a physical model in the laboratory. Thus, the sudden dam break phenomenon has been modeled in the hydraulic laboratory of Amirkabir University of Technology. Dierent tests have been planned and carried out in the laboratory for shape factors ranging from 0.040 to 0.557. Hence, 7 series of reservoir with dierent dimensions and geometry have been built and tested. To measure the ow velocity and also the variations of water level at dierent points of the channel, the ADV speed meter and Ultrasonic and Micro sonic sensors were used, respectively. Having the variations of velocity and water level, the ow rate, due to dam break, is calculated and the corresponding hydrograph for each reservoir shape factor is obtained. Finally, the obtained hydrographs are evaluated and compared, and a correlation between the reservoirs shape factor and the Froude Number is developed. The experimental data were compared with those obtained from dierent actual dam break case histories. Although good agreement between the trends was found, large deviations from actual cases were observed. This may be due to several simplied procedures applied to the physical model developed in the laboratory to study the phenomenon. Thus, more sophisticated models with larger capabilities are needed to reach more accurate and reliable results in future research.