Site inspection

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) detection

Local bubbling zone

Torrential rain in North China has greatly affected the local flood control safety in recent days. From July 19 to July 20, 2016, heavy rain resulted in the rapid increase of water level of the Huangbizhuang Reservoir in Hebei Province to 8.55m within 48 hours. At about 8am of July 21, there were rolling bubbles in large water area at the auxiliary dam section of 500m within the reservoir area accompanied by sound.

The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and MWR paid high attention to these phenomena. In order to find out the causes of rolling bubbles and current dam safety state and ensure the reservoir downstream people’s life safety and normal function of the reservoir, NHRI and MWR Dam Safety Management Center sent 7 experts including Prof. YUAN Hui for the site right on the afternoon of July 21 according to the arrangement of relevant government. They reached the reservoir at 4am next day after 12 hours’ drive, and threw themselves into site investigation right away.

After field inspection, observation data analysis and preliminary analysis of GPR detection, the experts put forward the opinions on engineering quality of dam section with rolling bubbles and current dam safety state, and successfully completed the tasks entrusted by the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and MWR. Vice Minister of Water Resource, Mr. LIU Ning fully affirmed the work done by NHRI experts with a special letter of thanks.