ECEG-4243

Hydropower Engineering

Chapter four
Spillways

Aksum Institute Technology

Faculty of Electrical &
Computer Engineering
Department of Power Engineering
Araya. H

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Spillways
Spillways are familiar hydraulic structures built across a stream
to control the water level .
It is used at both large and small dams for letting flood flows pass,
thereby preventing overtopping and failure of the dam.
A spillway as sketched in Fig. below is the most common type. Three
zones can be distinguished: the crest, the face and the toe each with its
separate problems.
crest

face

toe

Fig. . General view of a spillway

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• A passageway through which surplus water escapes from a
reservoir or the lake.
• Discharges the flood water to downstream of river without
overtopping the dam.
• A structure which will not let the water rise above the
maximum reservoir level.
• A spillway is essentially a safety valve for a dam.

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Requirements of Spillway :
• Provide structural stability to dam under all conditions.
• Safe disposal of water without toe erosion.
• Should have an efficient operation.
• Should be economical.
Location of Spillway :
• Within the body of the dam
• At one end of dam.
• Entirely away from it, independently in a saddle.

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Component parts of Spillway
• Approach channel
• Control structure
• Discharge carrier
• Discharge channel
• Energy dissipators

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Approach channel
• Entrance structure or the path to draw water from reservoir and convey
it to the control structure.
• It may be straight or curved in plan.
• Its banks may be parallel, convergent, divergent or combination of
these and may be vertical or sloping.
• It may insure minimum head loss through the channel and to obtain
uniformity of flow over the control structure.

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Con’t...

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Control structure
• Major component of spillway provided with bridge and gates.
• Regulates and controls the surplus water from the reservoir.
• It does not allow discharge of water below the fixed reservoir level.

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Discharge carrier
• It is the waterway provided to convey the flows released from the
control structure to the downstream side of spillway.
• The cross section may be rectangular, trapezoidal or of other shape.
• Waterway may be wide or narrow, long or short.

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Discharge channel
• Provided to convey the water from bottom of the discharge carrier to
the downstream flowing river.
• It may be the downstream face of spillway itself.
• The width of discharge channel depends on amount of water to be
conveyed.

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Energy dissipators
• At the end of discharge carrier, the water released from control
structure has great velocities enough to cause scour.
• Thus, energy dissipators are provided to avoid the scouring of
downstream side of spillway.
• These are to be provided before water entering the discharge channel.
The following are the different types of dissipators:
1. Bucket type energy dissipators 2. Stilling basin type dissipators
3. Baffle type dissipators.

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 Thanks for your attention

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