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by MayeulC 1970 days ago
In that case it could be interesting to plan for future reinforcements, and continue to run the simulations as time passes and the situation evolves.

I don't know if it's due to models and computing environments not being stable enough, but I haven't heard of such a thing, while it is the obvious thing to do: even without reinforcing a dam, you could tell when it becomes dangerous to operate it.

1 comments

> In that case it could be interesting to plan for future reinforcements, and continue to run the simulations as time passes and the situation evolves.

While I agree that the idea is good, I imagine that at a point where you are planning to extend your dam by another 20m, you already have to implement the required changes in your foundation and general structure and additionally, turbines and emergency vents have to be upsized for the extended heights. So the only thing you are now missing during build is the extra 20m of dam, as the rest has to be built anyways. This leads back to my initial point of the right amount of over-/underprovisioning..

I am not sure if I understood the second point correctly, but you can obviously tell when a dam becomes too dangerous. This can either be because the foundation has set and you now have increased structural stress, the amount of water has increased beyond the maximum allowed levels or a multitude of other reasons, but they are actively monitored.