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The reliable operation of spillways, in emergency as well as normal conditions, is one of the vital components in dam safety. Free or uncontrolled overflow spillways are the most reliable choice however. They usually impose higher construction cost and /or results in wasting a considerable amount of water or live capacity of the reservoirs. Employing fuse gates might be a way of reconciling dam safety with maximized storage capacity. The operation of the system can be controlled to within a few centimeters, and the entire installation is not lost for floods less than the maximum design flood. The installation offers more or less the same level of safety as ungated spillways, but avoids their inherent storage capacity loss. Optimum design of fuse gates in particular installation calls for a mathematical model. The model developed in this work includes structural, hydraulics and operational constraints while maximizing the expected cost over the useful life of the project. Accounting for the lost benefit (i.e., water lost as a result of gate tilting) has an influenced effect on the optimum design. To test the performance of the model, data from Zarineh Rud dam in Iran has been used and its result is compared with a direct search technique. The model is capable of helping the design engineer to select the best alternative considering different types of constraints.

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Hydraulics of stepped spillway is a very complicated phenomenon, as it consists of a two phase flow passing through a set of designed steps. The steps increase the rate of energy dissipation taking place on the spillway face. Turbulence, flow aeration and energy dissipation are the main tasks in the design of such structures. This study consists of the experimental investigation to determine the energy dissipation over stepped spillways. Experiments conducted at Water Research Institute on two physical models of the Siyah Bisheh stepped spillways in Iran. To develop a more generalized expression, the results of previous investigations were also considered in our study. Therefore, a wide range of variables were taken into account to estimate the energy dissipation along the non-uniform flow regime. Assuming the energy dissipation along the uniform flow regime to be equal to the vertical displacement of the jet, the total energy lost was calculated. A comparison of the results with those of measurements showed a regression of 0.92 for the total energy dissipation, which is one of the features of the present method for estimating of the energy dissipation, compared with the previous investigation.

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Local scour downstream of hydraulic structures is one of the critical phenomena which has absorbed a vast amount of interests by researchers. The designers of hydraulic structures, particularly, spillways try to utilize proper means to minimize the consequences of excess energies downstream of such structures which usually tend the erosion at their immediate downstream reaches. The stepped spillway is designed to create a large amount of energy dissipation by means of steps and would decrease the amount of scour evolution at its downstream. This article presents the results of 67 experiments conducted at two different scales of stepped spillways, to study the local scour downstream the structure. The experiments were planned to consider a wide range of geometrical factors, flow characteristics, and sediment properties. The time length of experiments was ranged from 6 to 24 hours which produced more than 80000 data points for analytical considerations. The results were used to render a regression equation to define the similarity among the scour hole profiles. It was observed that, a long term observation would be needed to reach the equilibrium state. However, semi-equilibrium conditions will be achieved after 24 hours. It was also noted that the depth of scour hole adjacent to channel walls was bigger than that at centerline.