2011 – Where is our Weir going – an Unusual Upgrade!
Amanda Ament, Jon Williams, Malcolm Barker
Aplins Weir is located on the Ross River in Townsville, downstream from the Ross River Dam. Previous work had identified Aplins Weir as exhibiting factors of safety below 1.0 under normal operating conditions, with over 1000 persons at risk today in the event of failure. Originally constructed in the early 1920s, Aplins Weir has been upgraded and repaired following various failures on a number of occasions. The end result is a complex reinforced concrete and steel sheet pile composite structure reliant for stability on a number of unreliable components. This paper presents the historical data describing the current configuration of the weir, and the analyses required to evaluate the extisting structure, leading to the design of the proposed upgrade works. The final design involves a retrofit of large diameter cast-in-place lined piles and a heavily reinforced base overlay slab designed to completely bypass all existing vulnerable substructure elements.
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Papers 2011
2011 – The Quality Chain of Dam Surveillance
Learn moreDan Forster, Murray Gillon
A robust and defensible dam surveillance process is considered to be the ‘front-line of defence’ in ensuring dams do not present an unacceptable risk to people, property and the environment. The concept of a ‘Quality Chain of Dam Surveillance’ describes the surveillance process as a multi-linked chain where each step in the process forms a critical link. Without rigorous attention given to quality assurance links in the chain can become tenuous or broken and thus compromise the integrity of the whole chain. Hydro Tasmania is currently re-engineering its existing surveillance process using the Quality Chain of Dam Surveillance as a basis.
This paper presents the concept of the quality chain and uses the Hydro Tasmania improvement initiative as an example application of the concept. The paper is intended to provide a fresh perspective on what is sometimes considered a stale topic and reinforces the need for a considered approach to dam surveillance.
2011 – The Quality Chain of Dam Surveillance
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Papers 2011
2011 – If it ain’t broke don’t fix it – or should you? Lessons learned from relying on past performance of mechanical assets.
Learn moreStuart Richardson
The application of maintenance to mechanical assets is a mature and well understood discipline. Although techniques and methods differ from industry to industry, the experiences and knowledge of practitioners should be transferable, but are they?
A challenge faced by all engineers is finding the appropriate balance between obtaining detailed physical evidence of asset condition through invasive disassembly and inspection against assessing condition based on monitoring and past performance.
This paper describes the experiences of the author in applying mechanical maintenance skills in the dams environment and shares some important lessons learned along the way.
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Papers 2011
2011 – Blackman Dam Failure Emergency Management
Learn moreBen Hanslow and David Brett
The Blackman Dam is a 27 m high, zoned earthfill dam located upstream of the township of Tunbridge in the Tasmanian Midlands. The dam has an estimated storage capacity of 7300 ML and an assigned Hazard Rating of High C.
The Blackman Dam was constructed over the period November 2003 to September 2004. The dam supplies water for irrigation to farms in the area and potentially to the local towns of Tunbridge and Oatlands.
Filling of the Blackman Dam commenced in 2005. After substantial filling of the dam and following a heavy rain event, an area of seepage was noted on the far left abutment of the main embankment mid morning of Thursday 13th October 2005. The seepage was reported by the dam operators as being “garden hose flow”. By mid afternoon of that day, this had increased to “100 mm pipe flow” and discoloured. The Dam Safety Emergency Plan was activated.
This paper discusses lessons learnt and provides details on the implementation of the Dam Safety Emergency Plan and emergency actions taken to successfully avoid a breach of the dam wall. The paper also provides details on the geotechnical investigations that were carried out and factors contributing to the piping failure. Embankment repairs were successfully completed by mid 2010 and first filling of the Blackman Dam occurred in 2011.
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Papers 2011
2011 – Factors Influencing the Estimation of Extreme Floods
Learn moreRory Nathan, Peter Hill
This paper provides an overview of the different simulation frameworks used for the estimation of design floods.. For small events the behaviour of many flood modifying factors is highly variable and chaotic, whereas as the magnitude of the event increases so does the organising influence of the dominant meteorologic conditions. The approach to design flood estimation will depend upon the availability of data and the exceedance probabilities of interest. The techniques can vary from frequency analysis of the data recorded at a site to rainfall-runoff modelling with design rainfall inputs derived from regional frequency analysis. For extreme floods, which are of relevance for assessing flood loadings for dams and the assessment of spillway adequacy, the stochastic (Monte Carlo) approach offers a number of advantages over the traditional deterministic approach. Although there has been significant progress in design flood estimation practice in Australia over the last couple of decades there remains many significant research and training needs.
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Papers 2011
2011 – Comparison of wave passage and incoherence effects on nonlinear non-uniform excitation of concrete arch dams
Learn moreM. A. Hariri Ardebili, M. Akbari and H. Mirzabozorg
This paper presents a study on the effects of incoherence (considering the Harichandran and Vanmarcke coherency model) and wave-passage (considering various wave velocities) on the nonlinear responses of concrete arch dams . A double curvature arch dam was selected as numerical example, the reservoir was modeled as incompressible material and the foundation was modeled as a mass-less medium. Ground motion time-histories were artificially generated based on a Monte Carlo simulation approach. Four different models were considered in the generation of ground motions; Uniform excitation; Just incoherence effect; Just wave passage effect; and finally take into account both incoherence and wave passage effects. It was revealed that modeling incoherency can have significant effect on the structural response of the dam by modifying the dynamic response of uniform excitation and inducing pseudo-static response. Also, it was concluded that incoherency effect overshadow wave passage effect and results caused by wave passage effect are close to the results of uniform excitation.
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