The book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter is introductory and discusses some aspects of dams and dam failures in the world. Dam breaching, including the types and causes of dam failures, and mechanics of breach erosion, is presented in Chapter 2. Hydraulics of dam breaching constitutes the subject matter of Chapter 3. It encompasses some aspects of flood hydrology and reservoir hydraulics, hydraulics of flow over the dam, erosion and sedimentation, geomechanics of breach slope collapsing, hydraulics of chennels and floodplains, damage assessment, and disaster mitigation. Field data on dam breaching are presented in Chapter 4. The technology of dam breaching is far from advanced and is still in the early stages. Simple empirical and conceptual models are often useful and seem to provide, under certain conditions, satisfactory results. Such models are derived in dimensional form in Chapter 5 and in dimensionless form in Chapter 6. More detailed mathematical models are reviewed in Chapter 7. A short comparative evaluation of these models and an assessment of dam-breach modeling technology are presented in Chapter 8.
