Experimental Study of Delta Erosion Due to Dam Removal

Cantelli, A., Paola, C. and Parker, G., 2004, Experiments on upstream-migrating erosional narrowing and widening of an incisional channel caused by dam removal, Water Resources Research, 40, W03304, doi:10.1029/2003/WR002940 The present paper reports on a laboratory investigation of the erosion of a deltaic front induced by the removal of a dam. We built a laboratory model of a dam, and observed both the sedimentation in the reservoir due to the downstream propagation of a delta front and the erosion of the delta front during dam removal, including measurement of channel morphology and flow field. Based on an analysis of bank erosion two principal erosive trends were detected: during the initial stage of erosion the width of each section quickly decreased to a minimum value, after which the section widened. Undistorted Froude similitude is used to scale the results up to field dimensions.