Engineering Commons^™

Using A Systems Approach To Analyze The Operational Safety Of Dams, Leanna M. King

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Dam systems are arrangements of interacting components that store and convey water for beneficial purposes. Dam failures are associated with extreme consequences to human life, the environment and the economy. Existing techniques for dam safety analysis tend to focus on verifying system performance at the edge of the design envelope. In analyzing the events which occur within the design envelope, linear chain-of-events models are often used to analyze the potential outcomes for the system. These chain-of-events models require that combinations of conditions are identified at the outset of the analysis, which can be very cumbersome given the number of physically …