Monitoring the behavior of hydrotechnical constructions

Abstract

In old times, hydrotechnical constructions, mostly dams were built for the single purpose of water supply or irrigation. As civilizations developed, there was a greater need for water supply, irrigation, flood control, navigation, water quality, sediment control and energy. Demand for water is steadily increasing throughout the world. There is no life on earth without water, our most important resource apart from air and land. During the past three centuries, the amount of water withdrawn from freshwater resources has increased by a factor of 35, world population by a factor of 8. The purposes of dams are wide, from irrigation to hydroelectric power plants, from water supply to flood control. Therefore, dams are constructed for a specific purpose such as water supply, flood control, irrigation, navigation, sedimentation control, and hydropower. A dam is the cornerstone in the development and management of water resources development of a river basin. The multipurpose dam is a very important project for developing countries, because the population receives domestic and economic benefits from a single investment. At present, river engineering in general and dams for water reservoirs in particular, are constructions with a very long lifetime, and therefore their achievement involves financial efforts particularly important. However, dams require defensive engineering to ensure their continuing security. Surveillance their behavior during construction, at the beginning of exploitation and also along its exploitation period provides the guarantee of their safety and also the possibility to prevent serious accidents that could turn to catastrophes. The supervision of dam behavior is achieved through visual inspections by qualified personnel and interpretation of data obtained from monitoring the behavior of measuring parameters of relevant parameters. At this stage, there is generally the view that a complete and sophisticated monitoring system would be, it cannot replace a direct visual inspection. Some of the most dangerous events such as local deformations, cracks, concentrated infiltrations, wet spots cannot be detected with measuring instruments. But once an anomaly has been detected through visual inspections through the monitoring system, its evolution can be traced and interpreted based on the data provided by the monitoring system. The number, but also heights and lengths of the dams achieved until now, have grown constantly together with the technical problems.