Hydrologic Issues for Dams - Association of State Dam Safety Officials

y BOSS International has an option for considering mud-wave propagation usingBingham Plastic Flow Theory, but it does not appear to work satisfactorily. Sincewe are building tailings dams higher and higher, we must have the necessaryanalytical tools that enable us to address the safety issues related to this type ofdam, particularly how they could affect the downstream community andinhabitants when they fail. (Bechtel has recently completed, in high ChileanAndes, a 120-m high tailings starter dam, which will be built-out to an ultimateheight of 175 m high in 8 years, and retain more than 60 million cubic meters oftailings consisting of fine soil particles and slime.)The development of such computer codes is, by no means, an easy undertaking.It will involve hydrologic and hydraulic engineers, geotechnical engineers as wellas mining process engineers. But it is a task we must do in order to improve ourstate-of-the-art knowledge in dam safety analysis.Closing RemarksI have stated, from my own perspective as a practitioner from the industrial sector, theapplied and fundamental research needs for hydrology in dam safety analysis. They are:•••the compilation and publication of regional basin runoff models and parametersthe provision of guidance in incorporating confidence limits in flood frequencyanalysisthe development of computer codes for the simulation of dam break mud-wavepropagation in river channel resulting from breaching of tailings damsI hope that we can give these topics serious considerations and include them in the list ofresearch needs for dam safety analysis to be formulated by this Workshop.Paper 10 - Hui 48