Hydraulic Studies of the Spillway for the Mangla Dam

The Mangla spillway is an excellent example of the interdependency of hydraulic design, structural design, and economics, each of which has a bearing upon the project. This final report of the experimental program describes a long series of experiments to test different design concepts that were evolved to meet the demands of the field conditions. The initial studies dealt with the ski-jump principle, which for reasons of cost was attractive. However, because of the excessive scour of the relatively non-resistant foundation material in the neighborhood of the main embankment, this was abandoned and the research was dissipated in a stilling basin. The very high uplift forces associated with this particular application of the single stilling basin scheme led eventually to the two basin scheme, in which the pool floor of the upper stilling basin is located approximately at tailwater level to eliminate high uplift forces.