Assessment of water leakage through the right abutment of the Seymareh dam

One of the major issues in dam construction is water seepage, post impounding. Assessment and prediction of the amount of water leakage can be useful in preventing such events. The Seymareh dam has been constructed on the Seymareh River in Ilam province, Southwest of Iran. The dam controls the floods and generates hydroelectric power. It is already under impoundment and the seepage problem is being considered. Grout curtains have been employed in two directions at the right abutment of the dam to control the seepage. The normal reservoir level is 720 m and it has been impounded at the 660 m level up to the point. The purpose of this study is to predict the amount of water seepage through the right abutment of the dam by using numerical modeling. For this purpose, a new GW finite element code was used for a two-dimensional simulation of the water seepage. The Levels of the observations wells and the discharges of the downstream springs on the right river bank are used as the main data for this modeling and its verification. Assessments show that if the dam impoundment rises to the normal level, significant seepage may occur through the right abutment.