For those who are not aware: I'm a licensed design & construction professional.
The dam could collapse on its own due to exceeding of safety parameters for structural integrity. While it is difficult to prove that this is what happened without access to design data for the dam we can easily tell that
the failure was inevitable.
Here's why:
This graphs shows data on water levels from 2016 to 2023:
Below data for 2019-2023. Red denotes conditions before failure. Blue and green are periods of greatest change in water levels in previous years. Black numbers indicate relative change of water level compared to previous state. Red numbers are approximate duration of change in months.
View attachment 114072
Kakhovka dam is a
gravity dam.
This is the generic representation of a gravity dam:
View attachment 114073
Gravity dam works against the pressure exerted by the body of water in two dimensions - it uses mass and inertia to prevent the water from overturning and it uses mass and friction to prevent the water from pushing it aside. The dam's section is designed so it stays
in place and
upright.
Water levels in the reservoir are therefore important for two reasons - they represent a change in
mass and
volume of body of water which respectively determine the
load or force/pressure that is exerted on the structure as well as the
area where the load affects the structure. So it's not just the forces it's also the torque - and if you remember something from school you should remember Archimedes' argument that with a long enough lever he would move the Earth. The height of the water is the "lever".
What you see on the graph is a type of harmonic movement that the body of water in lake Kakhovka exerts on the structure of the dam. That harmonic movement produces a wave of matter which then translates to similar harmonic movement of the dam. It is called
resonance.
This is why and how buildings collapse during earthquakes. The movement of the earth is a wave of matter which continues along all matter connected to the earth. If you have high frequency wave (short and fast) then small buildings collapse but large buildings survive. If you have low frequency wave (long and and slow) then small buildings survive but short buildings collapse. It is usually demonstrated visually like this:
The buldings shake because the earthquake wave propagates through them. If the size of the building corresponds with the size of the wave then there's a moment where the entire structure of the building carries the entire energy and shape of the wave and the structure is deformed accordingly and stress is at maximum. In situations like these buildings may not even collapse, because they disintegrate in the air. They're broken everywhere at once by the wave.
The same thing happens here to the dam. Look how the water levels drop and rise: +0,5 -0,5 +0,5 -1,0 +0,75 -2,0 +3,5
This is essentially as if there was a very slow earthquake. Humans won't feel it. But structures will. Some structures are designed to take more of such dynamic stress but the historical trend of water levels indicates that Kakhovka dam wasn't designed to do that. Otherwise we'd see it as part of normal operations.
But that's not all. There's another problem - water changes physical properties of construction elements much like temperature can change structural strength of steel.
This is why in pure physical terms dams never really stop the flow of water but slow it down to an extreme degree. Water i.e. the matter of the body of water moves through the barrier both through the sluice gates, and through micropores and through the physical barrier itself - atom by atom, molecule by molecule, drop by drop. So dams are designed to manage the flow of water in a specific way.
The reason why there are so many sluice gates is because the geometry of the water stream matters to structural integrity. It's not just managing the water flow downstream. If that was it then large dams like Three Gorges would have a single huge sluice placed in a separate canyon like the locks for navigation. Structurally that is much easier to handle but the dam needs a control mechanism to retain structural integrity.
If you need to discharge excess water you do it with optimal parameters - many sluices at once so that the water stream has largest possible geometry which determines the pressure of the stream and therefore forces exerted on the aperture and the rest of the structure. Too much water through too small an aperture and the structure will be damaged.
Combine it with that slow earthquake and the water will get inside the structure, change the physical properties of everything and the entire dam will turn from solid to
plastic. Jet fuel doesn't melt beams, it makes them plastic and unable to carry the load. Water does the same to dams.
View attachment 114079
This is elementary violation of safety. The same sluices continuously discharging water for weeks. Once the level of water reaches or exceeds the maximum - as it did recently - this happens:
View attachment 114080
Top circle indicates two diffraction patterns - the water stream is so strong that as the water hits the edge of the aperture (sluice) it has such energy that it can back-propagate with a diffraction pattern.
Bottom circle indicates that the road bridge collapsed due to one of the supports being washed away by the stream of water around 1st or 2nd of June.
What you see here is the dam already being slowly ripped to pieces by the forces exerted by the water in the lake. The part above water just signals that the part underwater is losing its integrity and physical properties.
This is what actual structural failure looks like in real time - it's like an explosion but in very slow motion because that's how energy moves through water compared to fast oxidation in explosions or particle release in chain reaction.
And finally:
View attachment 114081
What you see here is what happens when the earthen mound that formed part of the dam loses its structural integrity due to a mass of water getting inside it from the other side. The water flowing through the breached dam got on land, got into the ground, changed its physical properties and turned it plastic which then allowed the huge mass of the water in the reservoir to push it out of the way.
So as far as I can tell there's no explosive damage necessary to destroy the dam. All you need to do is
deliberate violation of safe operation of the dam.
And that was only possible for Russians because they were the ones controlling the dam. If they didn't want to destroy it they could easily come to some type of safety arrangement with the Ukrainians like it was done in Zaporozhia NPP. There's
nothing that Ukraine gains by failure of the dam which was inevitable if Russians didn't operate it per safety rules. The Russians might have as well tell the Ukrainians to come and operate the sluices themselves which they absolutely would because the consequences are obvious.
There was
nothing that Ukraine could have done that was damaging to Russian side there.
And no, there's no way you can damage the dam by even an extensive artillery shelling. This is
orders of magnitude below what's necessary in terms of destructive power. The actual structure of the dam is underwater and it's massive. If just the sluices were destroyed then the flooding would be limited and then both the upstream and downstream parts of Dnipro would equalize. The problem is not water overflowing over the top of the dam. The problem is destruction of the dam
underneath.
It's basic structural engineering and the violation of safety was
overt and
blatant.
And if you don't know - every legal system, including that of Russia, puts
legal obligation to maintain all structures in condition preventing their collapse. Here is the relevant term:
Отказ
And considering that Russia has unilateraly annexed Kherson oblast it puts Kakhovka dam under the legal regime of Russian safety regulations. If those safety regulations are violated the sanction is under
criminal law.
I think this is why Russia has recently did this:
So I'm saying this as a licensed professional who has a similar legal obligation under Polish/EU regulations:
- it's Russia's fault
- it's deliberate
- it is blatant
Can it be excused by incompetence of leadership in war conditions? No. At some point some Russian officer was told by the engineers that this could happen and said "I don't care" or a commander didn't ask an engineer if it could happen.
Why the media continue with "
Russians blew up the dam" is a mystery to me. I blame it on the stupidity and arrogance of leadership and media who don't care about what happened as long as it fits their narrative. Explosive demolition is
plausible but it's clearly not what happened here and it really is
that blatant. Could Russians
also blow it up? Sure. But they didn't need to.
It was just a question of time before the dam burst because structural safety was deliberately broken.
