Experimental Study on Air- and Water-Inflated Double-Rubber Dams
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 9
Abstract
A double rubber dam with the upper dam inflated by air and lower dam inflated by water is proposed in this paper. Large-scale physical hydraulic model tests are carried out to investigate the influence of the inflated air and water pressures, external water levels, anchoring distances, and cross-sectional perimeter ratios on the static response of the proposed structure. This study reveals that the optimum inflated air pressure in the upper dam is and that in the lower dam is , where and are the unit weight of water and perimeter of the upper dam. The optimum anchoring distance is , and the optimum perimeter ratio of the lower to upper dams is 0.9. Under the same external water depth, the material requirements of the proposed rubber dam are 105.8%–126% of the traditional rubber dam, and the tensile strength is 29.6%–48.8%. Considering the perimeter and tensile strength requirements, the total material costs of the air- and water-inflated double rubber dams are only 11.5%–24.2% of the traditional rubber dam.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The financial support from the Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Project (Grant No. 20JCJQJC00220), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51878446, 52171273, and 52108335) are gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 9 • September 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 18, 2022
Accepted: Jun 9, 2023
Published online: Jul 12, 2023
Published in print: Sep 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Dec 12, 2023
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