The Dartmouth Dam is a massive embankment dam that is filled with rock and a chute spillway that is normally uncontrolled across several rivers. The rivers that goes through it are the Gibbo, Dart and Mitta Mitta rivers. There are also a number of small rivers that act as distributaries and also the Morass Creek. The Dam was built on the north east of Victoria State close to the mount of Bogong, in the country of Australia. The dam was built to serve several purposes. Some of the uses include supply and conservation of water used both for the domestic and industrial duties, hydroelectric generation of power and also for irrigation process. It has an impounded reservoir known as the Dartmouth Reservoir and is also commonly known as lake Dartmouth (Arthington & Pusey, 2013). There also is a Dartmouth generation power station that generates power to the national grid that is situated close to the walls of the dam. Its main water supply is the river Murray that has a length of close to 2500km that rises from the Alps of Australia and discharges into the sea in South Australia.
This report paper aims at carrying out a critical exploration of the design process of the Dartmouth dam construction. A detailed analysis of the design process that is mainly focused on the conceptual design stages of the construction of the dam had been carried out. When carrying out the analysis, some of the factors that had been put into consideration included the following; functional analysis, system planning, performance measurement, system operation requirements, identification of needs, the concept of support as well as the concept of maintenance (Barrett, 2014). Given that the dam was originally meant to have a water storage capacity of close to 6.25 million Megalitres, there was also a possibility that it would have provided the southern Australia with additional control over the portion of water. It is therefore necessary to conduct a proper system design process of the given project in order to achieve its full potential.
Preliminary design is a stage of a project that involves creation of a greater level of design concepts that are meant to be the compliments of the project that is intended to be carried out. This design phase assumes that all the feasible decisions or selections have already been well-thought-out and that one project has been selected to be carried out. The selected project is one that meets the environmental, financial and economic standards. This given project of the Dartmouth dam was initiated in February 1973. Construction works were performed by the state rivers and water supply commission (Blanchard et al, 2010). The dam has a catchment that is located within the Victoria. The area of the catchment is approximated to be 3600km2.
Once the preliminary stage has been completed, it is then developed into a package of detailed design of engineering. This given detailed engineering design is considered as a primary tool that is used for developing a given set of specifications. These set of specifications should be best fitted for soliciting or acquiring international tenders from different engineering contractors. Most importantly, at the conclusion of the detailed design phase of the project, the client will also be able to have a proper estimate of the costs that will be reliable (Blyth et al, 2013). This is necessary when in need of a reliable cost that should be submitted for the evaluation of tenders. The Dartmouth dam was designed into finer details in order to allow for easier construction and determination of the total costs that would be involved. The wall of the dam consisted of a rock-fill embankment that has a height of 180m. The major components used for construction were;
The embankment was designed at 670m of length at the top and 700 m at the base.
Its spillway crest is at 486m above sea level and has a length of close to 92m. In situations where the reservoir surpasses its capacity, the floodwater will flow down the crest on a concrete chute that is 80m long. The construction of the spillway was meant to evenly spread flood water s across the cascading steps. The original design of the spillway was to be concrete lined. This was not able to be achieved due to the massive economic requirements. A decision was therefore reached to defer the idea indefinitely (Brittain & Saltveit, 2011).
During the construction of any project, it is a very important practice to perform a system test on the project. A system test will enable designers and the clients to find out if the project will attain the required safety standards and that the likelihoods of occurrence of a risk are greatly lowered (Doeg, 2014). A system test performed on a complete project will aid the purpose of evaluating if the project conforms to the intended objectives. This idea was considered by all the parties that were involved in the construction of the Dam. At the moment that the construction of the dam was already getting to completion, the participants involved- the design consultant, operator and the owner- conducted a system test. This enabled them to understand that there was need to increase the spillway capacity. This would ensure that the dam attains an acceptable risk level against contemporary safety guidelines for the dam (Maheshwari et al, 2010).
The construction of the dam has several features in its design that was purposefully done to ensure that it was fully optimized. It was designed in order to aid several purposes. Some of the usages include water conservation, water supply for both the domestic as well as industrial activities, hydroelectric generation of power and also for the irrigation process. The current state of the dam has continued to validate its needs (Maver & Farmar-Bowers, 2014). Its storage capacity has ensured that there is proper and continuous storage and conservation of water and also plenty supply of water. A power generation plant that was constructed on the dam has always been operative. The plant has continued to generate power both for domestic consumption and industrial activities.
Optimization. This involves making the best and the most productive use of any given resource. ‘Dartmouth dam captures alpine water that is of high quality that flows down river Mitta Mitta and also from its other tributaries. The water reservoir is the largest storage capacity in the Murray River system. It also is the most upstream storage. Of all the dams in Australia, the Dartmouth dam has got the highest embankment. The dam has the capability of holding up to 40% of the total storage capacity of River Murray ‘(Maver et al, 2011).
The high ability of the dam to hold water resulted to the development of the Dartmouth power station. The Dartmouth power station began its activities in 1981. The power station has got one 180 MW hydro-generator. Activities and operations on the power station are done remotely by AGL hydro. They are controlled strictly in order to give precedence to the requirements of water that flows downstream. There are no restrictions for the power station to operate whenever the water levels get to between 434m and 483.5m beyond the sea level. The power may only be switched off when the levels of water get to below 432m above the sea level. There also are times when there are releases made to be used for irrigation (Neely et al, 2010). When such situations occur, it is on the power station that the releases are made. The reservoir is also well known for recreational trout fishery. This is because there is regular restocking done by the ‘Victorian Department of Primary Industries.’
From the period it began its operations, there have been significant efforts in order to control the downstream flood. It is important to note that floods management is a process that is usually carried out for just a few months in over an era. The process is mostly performed during the wetter periods when the levels of storage are increased. Containing most of the inflows is mostly done at the reservoirs or through releases that are done regularly (Olden & Naiman, 2010).
Once the project is completed and is fully functional, an evaluation on the technical performance is carried out. The technical performance ideally measures the quantitative values as well as the estimated and predicted values. These values are important for evaluation since they measure and describe the performance of the dam (Pardo et al, 2012). The technical performance measures that were considered for evaluation were the following; human factors, maintainability, the process time, dam components and dam capacity. The technical performance measures were evaluated and their relative importance determined. The results of the technical performance measures can be shown as follows.
Conclusion
The key objective of this paper is to critically analyse the process of design for our project, which in this case is the Dartmouth dam. There are a number of stages for the design of a project. The two major stages that are discussed in this paper and that require detailed analysis are the detailed design and preliminary design stages (Walker, 2011). While coming up with the initial plan of constructing the Dartmouth dam, it is important to follow up on all the named stages since this will ensure that the project that is achieved meets the required quality standards as well as the stated objectives. In order to ascertain whether the construction activities of the Dartmouth dam were carried out in an efficient and effective manner, a system test is performed on the project. An equally important benefit of performing a system test is that it will assist in conducting a risk analysis on the project. Once a risk analysis has been carried out, several ideas that will help reduce the chances of occurrence of the risks are discussed and implemented. A proper and detailed evaluation on the project is then carried out. The evaluation is also necessary since it enables a comparison of the initial intended benefits with the current benefits that are being observed on the completed project. This paper will therefore help in preparation of a detailed design of the Dartmouth dam and how optimisation can be achieved from the Dartmouth construction project (Walker, Shiel & Cadwallader, 2013).
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