Ageing Evaluation Model of Dams and Case Studies

While many dams around the world are still under construction or planning, existing dams are ageing and becoming more degraded over time since their completion. Due to the relatively higher probability of failure during their remaining lifetime, ageing dams need to be properly maintained based on well-established inspection and evaluation systems. However, at present, it is not easy to know how seriously aged or degraded they are and when to take the action required to secure their safety at rational cost. In this paper, an ageing evaluation model (AEM) is suggested as a simple assessment method for dam ageing which can be used to determine the time for adequate maintenance work to extend the lifetime of dams. For the development of the AEM for existing dams, a variety of data showing any changes in integrity of the dam body since its completion were collected and analyzed. Some examples of ageing evaluation using the newly proposed AEM are presented here. It is expected that the proposed method may be useful to estimate the time for the opportune maintenance of existing dam facilities.