Case study on the Hoover Dam

2913 Words6 Pages

Before

Hoover Dam

After

By- Balaji.T.K, CE02B011
CONTENTS
No Description Page no
1. Hoover dam –an Introduction 1
2. Requirements posed by structural design 2
3. Requirements posed by other details 6
4. Type of Concrete 7
5. Guidelines for Mix design 9
6. Fabrication and Installation 10
7. Formwork 11
8. Cooling of concrete 12
9. Temperature control of Mass Concrete 12
10. Quality Assurance 13
11. Bibliography 14

Hoover Dam- an Introduction!

It still stands tall as an engineering marvel high above the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada. Hoover Dam attracts over 7 million visitors from around the new world every year feeding vast tourism into the Las Vegas Nevada and Arizona economy.
The building of Hoover Dam took the brilliance of over 200 engineers to pull-off what many deemed as almost impossible. And it was the fortitude of over 7,000 dam workers that endured amazingly harsh conditions and extreme dangers to complete Hoover Dam almost two years ahead of schedule

The Mission of the Dam:
1. Flooding along the Colorado River as it made its way to the Gulf of California had to be controlled.
2. The water-flow had to be harnessed to provide much needed water to the fertile, yet arid agricultural areas of California and Arizona.
3. Hydroelectric energy was to satisfy the requirements of millions and millions of people in adjacent regions.
Some Statistics About the dimensions of the dam:
Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and 1,244 feet long. At its base, Hoover Dam is 660 feet thick which is 60 feet longer than two football fields laid end-to-end. Combined with its top thickness of 45 feet, there is enough concrete (4.5 million cubic yards) in Hoover Dam to build a two-lane highway from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida. Or imagine a four-foot wide sidewalk around Earth at its equator.
A scenic by-product of Hoover Dam is the gigantic reservoir of Lake Mead, a stunningly beautiful water recreation wonderland. This boating, sailing, fishing and house-boating paradise attracts over 10 million visitors a year. Lake Mead covers 550 miles of majestic shoreline and 247 square miles of area which is twice the size of Rhode Island. Its capacity of 1 1/4 trillion cubic feet of water would cover the entire state of Pennsylvania one foot deep.
Requirements for concrete posed by Structural design:
The Hoover Dam is an arch dam. Arch dams transmit most of the horizontal thrust of the water stored behind them to the abutments by arch action and hence thinner cross sections are sufficient (compared to the massive cross-sections of the gravity dams). Narrow V-shaped canyons(just like the Black canyon where the Hoover dam was constructed) will be suited for locating arch dams since they can withstand the thrust produced by the arch section.

Open Document