Instability of Elastically Suspended Tainter-Gate System Caused by Surface Waves on the Reservoir of a Dam

Abstract

In this study, it is theoretically shown that an elastically suspended Tainter-gate system with damping effects possesses the property of a self-excited oscillation, provided that the center of the curved weir plate is not in agreement with the location of the trunnion pin. Moreover, the theoretically obtained characteristics for the self-excited oscillation are confirmed with experiments, and it is shown that the theoretical results are in good agreement with experiments. It is concluded that when designing a dam system with Tainter-gates or other similar devices, more interest and attention to the dynamical behavior of Tainter-gates should be taken in order to prevent disasters such as that which occurred in Japan.