Stability of Kongele earth dam against rapid drawdown of water from reservoir

Abstract

In dam construction stages when an earth embankment has retained a reservoir with constant water surface elevation for a long time, seepage conditions within the embankment will be reach a steady state. If it is necessary to drain the reservoir quickly, the pore-water pressures in the embankment may remain relatively high while the stabling effect of the reservoir's weight along the upstream (U/S) side for the embankment has removed. This process is referring to as"Rapid Drawdown"and may be cause instability in the upstream (U/S) face of the embankment. Kongele dam is one of the proposed earth dams to be implement within the current plan in Iraq. The authors study pore water pressure and the effect of rapid drawdown for the dam during one month, and the results were reduced to 13, 14 and 15 days to determine the optimal time for emptying the dam's reservoir, which it does not affect its stability if the factor of safety is not less than 1.2. It was found that the safety coefficient values in 13 days are less than the required value, while the values in 14 and 15 days are close to each other by 1.39% and the values are higher than 1.2 Therefore, the perfect time for drawdown is 14 days or more.