Artik dam
| Artik Dam, Karnut Reservoir |
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| Coordinates | 40 ° 39 '40 " N , 43 ° 54' 10" E | ||||||||
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| Storage space | 2 000 000 m³ | ||||||||
The Artik Dam is a dam in the northern Armenian province of Shirak that dams the Karnut Reservoir.
The dam is about 20 km south-southeast of the city of Gyumri , the former Leninakan, and northwest of Artik on the Mantash River , a left tributary of the Achurjan . The reservoir holds 2 million m³.
After five years of operation, the Artik dam collapsed in 1994. An entire section of the dam collapsed. The exact cause of the dam break is unknown.
The dam was built for irrigation in Soviet times and planned by VNIIG in St. Petersburg. It consisted of a pile of sand, was 500 m long and 18 m high. The air side was overgrown with grass and the water side was covered with larger stones on a layer of clay. Both sides had a slope of 1.5: 1. It's pretty steep. The crest of the dam was 6 m wide and unpaved.
The bottom of the reservoir is very permeable. That is why it was covered with a geomembrane made of polyethylene that reached down to the foot of the dam. It was stored between two 0.5 m thick layers of clay. The overlaps were just folded, not welded. There were few or no monitoring facilities at the dam.
Halfway up the dam, an extraction structure had been built on the water side, from which a passage at the same height led to the air side . The break began at this passage.
It is believed that by the end of spring 1994, the water in the reservoir rose, seepage increased, and suffosion and piping developed. Sembenelli compares the mechanism of the dam breaking with that of the Teton dam . Eventually the embankment collapsed so that the dam was flooded and washed away. The tsunami flooded two villages, resulting in two deaths and high material losses.
See also
Web links
- P. Groppo Sembenelli: Lessons learned from the failure of the Aretik dam. In: L. Berga (Ed.): Dam safety: proceedings of the International Symposium on New Trends ... Volume 1, Balkema 1998
- Safety of Small / Rural Dams and Barrier Lake Management. Worldbank (PDF file 5895 kB)