Recent advances in dam engineering / Последние достижения в области строительства дамб

Water is essential for life. It is required for other uses also such as irrigation, industry, and power development. Its demand is increasing with the increase in population and changes in life style, whereas the availability is practically constant. In India, water is available as precipitation which is concentrated largely in a few months of monsoon season and snowfall in the higher mountains for an equally short time window. Rainfall in monsoon months is also temporally and spatially random. Purely monsoon fed rivers in India have practically no flow in non-monsoon months and even the snow fed rivers of Himalayas have meagre non-monsoon flows of the order of 1 to 2% of the flows during monsoon. In order to maintain water supplies for various purposes in a uniform and assured manner throughout the year, the storages formed by dams are essential for sustainable water management. Dam design and construction is a time tested solution for storing river flows and is adopted all over the world. This art of damming rivers is as old as civilization. The dam technology development on scientific basis was started in the early years of the 20th century. Now it has been possible to design and construct dams upto a height of 300 m of both types i.e. of concrete and earth. Grand Dixence and Nurek dams are examples of large height.