Water Conveyance

---

Flow over a labyrinth weir at Lake Scranton Dam. (Image Source: Gannett Fleming)

Water conveyance is an important and essential design component of a dam for a variety of reasons including: the consumption of water resources, the controlled release of attenuated flood surges during large precipitation events, regular environmental releases for maintaining riverine ecosystem health, hydropower generation, or emergency drawdown of the reservoir to prevent a catastrophic failure of the dam.

Although necessary for proper operation of a dam, water conveyance features often add complexity and introduce discontinuities in a dam structure; thereby introducing potential areas of weakness where potential failure modes initiate. Because of this, the proper design and construction of water conveyance structures are critical to the safety of a dam.

Types of Water Conveyance

Depending on the type of release, different means of water conveyance can be used as follows:

• Outlet Works
• Gates/Bulkheads
• Spillways
• Overtopping Protection
• Siphons
• Penstocks
• Flumes
• Canals
• Tunnels
• Energy Dissipation

Trainings

On-Demand Webinar: Hydraulics 101: Intro to Hydraulics for Dam Safety

On-Demand Webinar: Hydraulics 201 for Dam Safety

Revision ID: 7472
Revision Date: 07/28/2023