ICEWaRM will be hosting this free webinar where I’ll be discussing the software program McBreach and its application to probabilistic dam breach modeling. Come join in! Please note the the webinar start time for your particular time zone. Starts at 10:30 AM local Sydney Australia time on Wednesday, Nov 6th. That is 3:30 PM on Tuesday, Nov […]
Fellow HEC-RAS modelers. Today is National Dam Safety Day. Dam Breach modeling is a key component to a well-rounded and robust dam safety program. If you’re doing dam breach modeling, you need to check out McBreach. Probabilistic hydraulic modeling is where we’re heading with dam breach analysis. Why not get a head start with McBreach. […]
Webinar: Dam Breach Modelling Colleagues- I’m honored to join Krey Price and Bill Syme in presenting a brief webinar on dam breach modeling hosted by ICEWaRM and the Australian Water School. Half hour presentation followed by discussion and a Q&A session. Please join if you can. https://www.icewarm.com.au/australian-water-school/short-courses/course/dambreak-modelling/ A vigorous discussion with a group of highly […]
Limited-time early-bird discounts available Registrations are now available for our dam breach course in Auckland, New Zealand to be held from 29 November to 1 December 2016. I will be teaching this course with help from Mr. Krey Price of Surface Water Solutions. Please come and join us! Register here: www.surfacewater.biz/auckland/ We have fewer than […]
Dam breach course in New Zealand and Round 2 of HEC-RAS 5.0 2D courses across Australia! We had a great turnout for our first HEC-RAS 2D course in Melbourne back in April, and I’m excited to be returning to the southern hemisphere in November to teach a 3-day HEC-RAS Dam Breach course to be […]
An interesting and informative paper by Mr. Bruno Neves of Brazil on HEC-RAS dam breach modeling and determining the self rescue zone, as well as the timing for alerting residents of the self-rescue zone. The concept is tested using HEC-RAS with hypothetical 2D breach scenarios of the Santa Branca Dam in the Paraíba do Sul […]
***Update: I received a few very important comments about this post that I want to share. First, and this is very important: These methods are not meant to be used to do any kind of detailed bridge design or bridge scour analysis (contraction, abutment, or pier scour). The methods I present in this post are […]
HEC recently published a new training document called “Using HEC-RAS for Dam Break Studies”. Written by Gary Brunner, P.E., D.WRE, it is an easy to follow guide for performing Dam Break simulations in HEC-RAS. It covers topics like: Which routing technique to use to route flows through your reservoir (Dynamic or Level Pool-although I wish […]
Another simple, yet very convenient tool not found discussed in the manuals is the ability to zoom in on one of the axes of a graphical plot. This is especially useful when trying to determine if you’ve captured the true peak discharge in a steeply rising hydrograph. Take the following example: an unsteady flow dam […]
One of the most frustrating aspects of unsteady HEC-RAS modeling can be the model stabilization process. You know, you’ve gone to great lengths collecting the best survey/topo data and solid hydrology. Then you’ve painstakingly spent hours…possibly days entered all of that data only to find that once you press the “Compute” button, the model crashes. […]
Hi everyone. For those of you who are HEC-RAS dam breach enthusiasts, I will be teaching a 3-day course on dam breach modeling with HEC-RAS in Boston in a few weeks. The course will be held next to the historic MIT campus overlooking the Charles River and downtown Boston, May 1-3. In this course you’ll […]
Our office ran into an unusual modeling situation recently. Here is a description of the situation: The project is a dam breach model, and the spillway for the dam diverts water to an adjacent basin. The spillway is actually more like a canal (the spillway reach) that runs about a mile until it empties into the adjacent […]