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Locating and Understanding the Hydraulics of Low-Head Dams
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Locating and Understanding the Hydraulics of Low-Head Dams

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydraulics and Hydrodynamics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 6863

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Rollin H. Hotchkiss

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil & Construction Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
Interests: managing reservoir sedimentation; hydraulics for restoration; river restoration; sediment transport
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Brian Crookston

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State Univeristy, Logan, UT, USA
Interests: hydraulics structures; spillways; dam safety; machine learning; flooding and hazards

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Each year, more than 50 people drown at low-head dams, and more than 1000 have perished to date. A low-head dam (LHD) is a structure built across a stream, river, or canal that raises the water level upstream for the purpose of diversion. Water flows over the LHD on a continual basis from streambank to streambank. Although traversing a LHD does not appear to be dangerous due to the relatively small drop in the water surface, under certain conditions, a submerged hydraulic jump can form on the downstream side of the LHD. Once caught in such a current, there is no escape.

The purposes of this Special Issue are to (1) explore innovative ways to locate low-head dams, (2) understand the complex hydraulics associated with submerged hydraulic jumps, and (3) create a simple method to assess the potential danger at any LHD site.

Prof. Dr. Rollin H. Hotchkiss
Dr. Brian Crookston
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • innovative ways to locate low-head dams
  • hydraulics associated with submerged hydraulic jumps
  • potential danger at any LHD site

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

0 pages, 2721 KiB  
Article
A Spreadsheet Tool for Defining Dangerous Flow Ranges of Low-Head Dams
by Tony L. Wahl and Connie D. Svoboda
Water 2023, 15(6), 1032; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15061032 - 9 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1974
Abstract
Low-head dams can be dangerous to recreational river users when a submerged hydraulic jump forms downstream, with recirculating surface flows that repeatedly carry trapped recreationists upstream into the high-velocity jet plunging over the dam crest. The flow endangers those who pass over the [...] Read more.
Low-head dams can be dangerous to recreational river users when a submerged hydraulic jump forms downstream, with recirculating surface flows that repeatedly carry trapped recreationists upstream into the high-velocity jet plunging over the dam crest. The flow endangers those who pass over the dam from upstream and can also entrap those who approach too closely from downstream. A national task force is using a range of methods to identify potentially dangerous structures, but definite determination requires field data and an analysis of the hydraulic conditions for each site’s range of likely flow rates. The spreadsheet tool described here determines the submergence created by site-specific tailwater levels and uses previous research results to estimate the associated magnitude of reverse flow velocities. The spreadsheet also determines the crucial tailwater level at which the jet passing over the dam stops plunging into the tailwater pool and instead flips to the surface, creating safer, downstream-directed velocities. The article describes application to specific sites and provides insight about the dangerous flow range of typical low-head dams. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating and Understanding the Hydraulics of Low-Head Dams)
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11 pages, 3770 KiB  
Article
A Machine Learning Approach for Identification of Low-Head Dams
by Salvador Vinay, Rollin H. Hotchkiss and Saul Ramirez
Water 2023, 15(4), 676; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15040676 - 9 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1849
Abstract
Identifying low-head dams (LHDs) and creating an inventory is a priority, as fatalities continue to occur at these structures. Because obstruction inventories do not specifically identify LHDs and they are not assigned a hazard classification, there is no official inventory of LHDs; a [...] Read more.
Identifying low-head dams (LHDs) and creating an inventory is a priority, as fatalities continue to occur at these structures. Because obstruction inventories do not specifically identify LHDs and they are not assigned a hazard classification, there is no official inventory of LHDs; a multi-agency taskforce is creating one now by identifying LHDs using Google Earth Pro (GE Pro). The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a machine learning approach can accelerate the creation of the national inventory. We implemented a machine learning approach to use a high-resolution remote sensing data with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture. The model achieved 76% accuracy in identifying LHDs (true positives) and 95% accuracy identifying Non-low-head-dams (true negatives) on the validation set. We deployed the trained model for the National Hydrologic Geospatial Fabric (Hydrofabric) flowlines in the Provo River watershed. The results showed a high number of false positives and low accuracy due to the mismatch between Hydrofabric flowlines and actual waterways. We recommend improving the accuracies of the Hydrofabric waterway tracing algorithms to increase the percentage of correctly classified LHDs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating and Understanding the Hydraulics of Low-Head Dams)
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17 pages, 10099 KiB  
Article
Stream Slope as an Indicator for Drowning Potential at Low Head Dams
by Jason W. Poff and Rollin H. Hotchkiss
Water 2023, 15(3), 512; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15030512 - 28 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2399
Abstract
With the increasing availability of low head dam inventories for the United States, the next challenge is discovering how to determine what dams pose the greatest risk to public safety, preferably before a death occurs. Submerged hydraulic jumps create the dangerous current that [...] Read more.
With the increasing availability of low head dam inventories for the United States, the next challenge is discovering how to determine what dams pose the greatest risk to public safety, preferably before a death occurs. Submerged hydraulic jumps create the dangerous current that drowns roughly 50 recreationists each year, and high tailwater is a key element in its formation. Using a simplified approach based on the Manning equation, flat downstream slopes can be a predictor of high tailwater. Stream slopes at low head dams in Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania were collected from the NHDPlus HR, and dams with recorded fatalities were compared to stream slopes at low head dams with no recorded fatalities. Using the Mann–Whitney U test, there was not enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant difference between the two populations. Until more fatality data are compiled and more low head dam locations are verified, individual testing of dams is recommended to establish each respective flow range that is likely to pose a risk to public safety. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating and Understanding the Hydraulics of Low-Head Dams)
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