What Things to Consider for a Better Dam Construction?

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Rivers and streams have always been the main source of inland water supply in many places. However, these water bodies carry a huge amount of water, which can’t be harnessed without any controlling mechanism. The dams play a key role in this. It’s a kind of stop which holds the river water on one side, acting as a reservoir, and allows only trickling rivulets to flow through the rest of the river course. It is only during the monsoons; the dam gates are opened to let the excess water flow out of the reservoir so that the excess water doesn’t cause floods.

Constructing a dam has become quite important in several areas where the river water needs to be controlled. However, this building process is not easy. You have to consider the safety terms and the site should be geographically suitable for building such a huge mechanism.

Dam construction is not a meagre work; it requires meticulous work and precision to ensure that dam is constructed as per the standard protocol. The civil engineers who work on dam construction have to consider different factors and make the use of best quality material to ensure that the dam lasts longer.

Specifying the Dam’s Utility

Before jumping straightaway to the dam construction, one needs to understand that a dam isn’t just important for controlling the river water’s flow in areas that can be highly affected by the monsoons. Rather, the reservoir built along with the dam acts as a storage house for still water which can then be used for irrigation, drinking water supply, and others. If you are planning to set up the dam for generating hydroelectricity, special designs have to be made. For this reason, it’s best to decide the purpose of the dam and then move onto the designing part.

Best Dam Construction

Key Factors to Consider Before Dam Construction:

1. Geographical Considerations for Choosing the Site

First, you need to choose a proper location where the dam has to be built. There are certain reservations you need to consider for the choice of the geographical spot.

To understand the suitability of a spot, aerial topography is an ideal technique to capture the land’s top views surrounding the river and the water body itself.
You need to refer to the contour maps to understand the geographical elevation, slope, and other factors about the land.
Dam construction can’t be done anywhere along the course of the river. It is the job of a geologist to decide which particular spots on the entire course are perfect for such a huge foundation.

2. Site Investing and Field Testing

The next factor you need to consider for the dam construction is site investigation. Once you have listed down the spots suitable for laying the dam, the engineer and the geologists will further move to the inspection process where it will be detected whether the soil is firm enough to hold the foundation, the slope angle, the type of rocks present underneath the soil layer, and other factors. Apart from inspection, field testing is also very much essential, which needs to be done at the earliest.

3. Designing the Dam’s Foundation

Once both the inspections are done, it’s time to move onto the next part of the dam construction, the foundation designing. The foundation is an integral part of dam construction and requires proper skills to design the architecture. It should have a thick base so that the above parts of the dam and the gates can stay intact even when water will be released at its full force.