Feedbacks from Asia and Europe for designing sediment passing facilities in hydropower dam projects
Retours d'expérience d'Asie et Europe pour le développement de systèmes de transparence pour le transport solide dans des projets de barrage hydro-électrique
Résumé
Sediment trapping in reservoirs is a serious concern for dam operators as it usually induces a series of adverse impacts upstream, within and downstream impoundments. Many strategies can be applied in order to avoid sediment continuity disruption. Such challenge is all the more important in mountainous and tropical basins that sediment-laden flows are particularly intense there. Among possible strategies, drawdown routing aims at minimizing sediment deposition while drawdown flushing is favored to recover storage volume. However, those options require designing suitable gate arrangement and operation rules, so as to achieve in particular following objectives: (1) recover natural-like flow conditions in the reservoir as soon as high flows and flood events are experienced in the basin, (2) allow a wide range of sediments extending from silt to gravel to pass as much as possible through the dam and (3) regulate if necessary solid fluxes released from the reservoir according to eco-friendly flushing principles. Through several examples taken in Japan and France on the Mimikawa and Rhône River basins respectively, the purpose of this communication is to present a series of case studies for which such successful strategies have been applied either from the very beginning of the design stage of the project or after several years of operation in the frame of retrofitting operations. Experience shows that many factors have to be taken into account to design appropriate operation rules and optimize the vertical distribution of hydraulic facilities contributing to pass sediment-laden flows. Those are in particular the catchment size, the stream slope, the hydrological and sediment regimes of the river, the possible existence of upstream reservoirs, the relative importance of each sediment transportation process at reservoir inlet, the different issues at stake along the stream, the range of target-particles to be passed through the dam as well as the dam height. Concerning that latter criterion in particular, suggestions resulting from proved feedbacks are proposed so as to specify, according to the dam height, the possible needs for including bottom outlets, low level outlets and/or surface spillways.
Domaines
Sciences de l'environnement
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
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