DAMSSupporting Dams with Innovative Materials
There are about 91,000 dams in the United States. About half the dams built in the past century and a half are starting to show their age, with resulting wear and tear. Severe weather events, extreme temperatures, erosion and rising water levels are all straining the infrastructure and exacerbating the impacts of deterioration and aging processes. In many cases, simply replacing the dams and levees is not a viable option due to high costs.
Hundreds of dams and levees across the country that were built in the past century and a half are starting to show their age, with resulting wear and tear. Ensuring the resilience and reliability of these structures into the next century and beyond requires sustainable modernization of the critical infrastructure systems. Severe weather events, extreme temperatures, erosion and rising water levels are all straining the infrastructure and exacerbating the impacts of deterioration and aging processes. In many cases, simply replacing the dams and levees is not a viable option due to high costs.
The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has joined forces with federal, military and academic partners to tackle this challenge. In early 2022, S&T launched a five-year effort with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the University of Kansas (KU), the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to find solutions that will help extend the life of dams and other concrete flood risk management infrastructure in the U.S. in an environmentally responsible way. The solution lies in science, research, technology and structural engineering.
“This endeavor is all about our natural disaster resilience and climate change research agenda,” said Dr. David Alexander, S&T Senior Science Advisor for Resilience. “The goal was to look at new material innovations that can strengthen the disaster resilience of water infrastructure to shocks and stresses.”
Focusing on Fiber to Give a Structural Boost
This critical infrastructure effort will improve the performance of dams and levees using fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs).
Different types of environmental stressors—for instance, chemical action, corrosion, freezing and thawing—have been causing the gradual deterioration of concrete infrastructure across the U.S. Weather-related disasters also place extreme pressure, causing systems to fail to function as expected. Many levees breached during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 caused some levees in South Carolina to fail. The Oroville Dam in California failed after heavy rains in 2017.
This S&T effort has two goals: one, to research how FRPs can help reinforce existing concrete dams to improve their performance and extend their service life, and two, to monitor the condition of dams and levees using deep learning and sensors deployed on unmanned aerial systems.
