Dam-break induced floods and sediment movement – State of the art and need for research

Floods from dam or dike failures may induce severe soil movements in various forms. The volume of sediment material that can be moved by such flows can reach the same order of magnitude as the initial volume of water released from the failed dam. Open-channel hydraulics deals reasonably well with two types of flow: slowly evolving alluvial flows, on the one hand, and transient flows in rigid geometries on the other hand. Dam-break induced geomorphic flows combine the difficulties of these two types of flow.