Overview
Levees are used to provide flood protection along waterways. Levees protect agricultural land as well as urban areas. Unfortunately, levees gained notoriety following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when several levees failed in Louisiana causing mass flooding to the city of New Orleans.
Levees can fail for several reasons, some can be man-made and some by events of nature. This course will review the types of failures and how to design and construct levees to avoid failures. The student will review the entire process of levee design from the initial investigation to final design and construction.
There are several steps to the design and construction of levees. These steps have been implemented in order to produce levees that will perform as effective as possible to protect low-lying areas. There are different types of levees that protect different types of property or areas, such as agricultural and urban. Although different types of levees exist, they all are intended to protect against water damage.
The design and construction of levees is a very important field or specialty within engineering and construction. This online course will explore the various types of levees along with their uses in flood protection. It will provide the reader the information to investigate the proper location, types, and size of levees.
This course will provide the reader with the knowledge to understand what levees are and why they perform correctly and why they fail. This course will probably be read by the engineer gaining valuable PDH credits; however it is presented so that anyone with an interest in this important subject can be educated. For the engineer, please share this valuable information with your colleagues. For the lay person or general audience, please share this information with your friends and coworkers.
The course materials are based solely on the informational report “Design and Construction of Levees” as found on the Website of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The student must take a multiple-choice quiz consisting of thirty-seven (37) questions at the end of this course to obtain PDH credits.
Specific Knowledge or Skill Obtained
This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:
- How Levees Differ from Earth Dams
- Several Different Types of Levees
- Principal causes of Levee failures
- Geological investigations for levee design
- Exploration process for designing a levee
- Materials to use when designing levees
- Definition of a foreshore
- Use of pressure relief wells
- Maximum slopes for levees
- Factor of safety for levees
- How pipes are used with levees
- How levees are compacted
- The use of Patrol roads on levees
- When to use turnouts on levees
- Definition of I Floodwalls
- Categories of soil used in Levee design
- Using agricultural pumps and how to select them
- How to determine the sewage demand and infiltration
- Definition of Sand Boils and why they occur
- Pipe capacity of corrugated metal used in levees
- Treatment of soil cement as it cures
Course
Click on the following link to the PDF document to review the course material before taking the quiz for credit.
Design and Construction of Levees
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