Fibre optic monitoring system at the Roßhaupten dam
Roßhaupten dam was built in the 1950s and dams Forggensee in the Bavarian Allgäu. The earthfill dam has a height of 37 m and a crown length of approximately 320 m. The dam's seal was extensively rehabilitated in 2018 and equipped with a fibre-optic leak detection system.
In the course of renewing the dam seal at the Roßhaupten dam, a new fibre-optic temperature monitoring system - the first of its kind in Germany - was implemented.
The installation, which was carried out using the so-called retrofit procedure, was performed before the start of the seal renewal, so that the success of the installation of the sealing wall could be monitored. Through this early use of the system
the presumed zones of increased permeability within the natural core seal could be identified during the production of the new sealing element.
After completion of the rehabilitation measure the fibre-optic leak detection system was put into regular operation. In order to ensure optimal monitoring of the dam, measurements are taken in real time and automatically evaluated, so that possible leakage areas can be detected at an early stage and alarms triggered accordingly.
The current measured values and any alarms are visualised in an online portal.
The system is based on the gradient- and heat-pulse-method.
