Deployment of a fibre optic leaks and seepages detection system below a waterproofing geomembrane on upper Bhavani dam Guidoux C.1, Beguin R.1, Pinettes P.1, Subramanian J.2, Subramanian V.2, Tronel F.3, Courivaud J.R.4 1Geophy Consult, Chambery, France 2Carpi India, Chennai, India 3Carpi, CARPI Tech S.A., Balerna, Switzerland 4EDF, Le Bourget du Lac, France Online published on 16 July, 2022. Abstract Although geomembranes represent a very safe solution for old dams waterproofing, they may remain sensitive to damages from mechanical impacts of any type. In order to reduce this vulnerability, development of low-cost technologies that enable operators to immediately detect and locate leaks as soon as they appear are requested. A competitive technology available to achieve this goal is fibre optics distributed temperature monitoring that enable to infer the presence of leakages from the temperature variations all along a fiber optic path with a very high resolution (up to 0.2 m). This type of measurement is acknowledged as particularly adapted to applications that require dense arrays of measurements or extended monitoring zones, such as dam faces or water reservoir faces. The ability of fibre optics to actually detect and locate leaks below geomembranes has been experimentally demonstrated in 2018 using heated fibre optics cables. The results gathered from this experiment were used to design an industrial leakage detection system dedicated to the surveillance of the geomembrane. This system is currently being installed on the Upper Bhavani Dam, in India. The present paper deals with the design and the on-going deployment of this system. Top |