Systematic Dam Safety Inspection

Planys conducted visual inspection of several aspects of a dam in South India. Flow of water and presence of debris in the tunnels poised challenges along with high suctions areas due to leakages. Also the depth of water was beyond 30m; thus sending human divers to perform this inspection was not possible.


Scope of Work: Underwater visual inspection of the emergency gate, 2 x sluice gates & a 4m long concrete tunnel (located between the emergency gate & sluice gate no.1) and their corresponding service gates and the inner face of the service gates located at the depth of 50 m

Planys Solution: The dam safety inspection was performed using Planys’ ROV Mike equipped with high resolution camera, altimeter and depth sensor.

  1. Using Plany’s Remote Operated Vehicle Mike, Over 75 anomalies were identified and categorised into minor, moderate and major based on the size of defects that included cracks, debris, suction in some area suggesting leakages, broken grooves, etc
  2. Heavy suction was experienced at different sections of the gate seal along with heavy spalling and surface deformation in several sections of the concrete tunnel
  3. All anomalies/defects were plotted against geo-tagged CAD drawing of every section on the Planys Analytics Dashboard (PAD) with localised click-to-view video feature.



Images show deployment and site setup of the ROV system during inspection



Photographs showing several major defects like rebars exposed, spalling & loss of concrete


“Hot-spot” map showing concentration of anomalie