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Title: Coupled dam safety analysis using WinDAM

Author
item NEILSEN, MITCHELL - Kansas State University
item Tejral, Ronald
item VISSER, KARL - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS, USDA)
item Hunt, Sherry

Submitted to: State Dam Safety Officials Association Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/1/2016
Publication Date: 9/20/2016
Citation: Neilsen, M.L., Tejral, R.D., Visser, K., Hunt, S.L. 2016. Coupled dam safety analysis using WinDAM. In: Dam Safety 2016. Proceedings of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials Annual Conference, September 15-22, 2016, Philadelphia, PA. 11 p. CDROM.

Interpretive Summary: Although dams across the U.S. have had an excellent safety record, dams do fail, and when they fail, life and property downstream are potentially at risk. Windows® Dam Analysis Modules (WinDAM) is a software developed to analyze overtopping and/or internal erosion of embankment dams and the subsequent failure that may occur. WinDAM is coupled with another software, Dakota, to assist in running several scenarios (i.e. range of input parameters: soil properties, dam geometry, storage volume of the reservoir) simultaneously. Coupling these software will allow users to efficiently analyze spillway and dam erosion data and to examine the sensitivity to input parameters. WinDAM is anticipated to assist the dam safety community in prioritization of aging embankment dams and in developing emergency action plans, zoning regulations, and flood warning systems.

Technical Abstract: Windows® Dam Analysis Modules (WinDAM) is a set of modular software components that can be used to analyze overtopping and internal erosion of embankment dams. Dakota is an extensive software framework for design exploration and simulation. These tools can be coupled to create a powerful framework. Several new interfaces have been designed to conduct coupled analysis over a wide range of input parameters including material properties, cross-sectional geometry, and bathymetry. The goal of this paper is to describe how the new framework was designed to loosely couple the existing software, WinDAM and Dakota, and how the framework can be used to efficiently analyze spillway and dam erosion data.