Grande Dixence Dam by Jesse Russell - Essay Example

To complete the construction of the dam’s wall about 6,000,000m3 of concrete was required (Berlow 67).

The construction of the Grand DixenceDamm involved four major construction stages. The first stage involved the erection of a 182meters high wall, which is about 0.64 of the dam’s full height. In the first stage, about 1.85 million meters cubed of concrete was used, which is about 0.3 of the dam’s total concrete volume. During the construction process, to ensure sound forces transfer and interlinkage between concrete “… previous stage to the following, downstream face of the dam in the first, the second and third stages were completed step by step for which the surfaces of the of the vertical planes of the steps were provided with projections” (Landau & Mgalobelov 102). In all four stages, the construction process of the dam had to take into account any possibility of tensile stress occurrence due to the “… partial filling of the reservoir on the stress-strain state of the dam” (Landau and Mgalobelov 102). As such, the construction of the dam had to be executed stage-wise.
Read More