Hoover Dam – Location and Major Uses

The Hoover Dam is located in the region of Black Canyon and is situated along the River Colorado in the United States. Its construction began in the year 1930 and came to a completion close to 6 years later. Also referred to as the Boulder Dam, It is a curve Dam that has got the most concrete elevation within the United States. Some of the major uses of the dam is for flood and sediment control, hydroelectric power generation, domestic and commercial Irrigation, as well as the supply of water for the households. It also makes up as a major tourist attraction center, witnessing up to one million guests of the total seven million tourists annually (Billington, Jackson & Melosi, 2015).

The research carries out an investigation of the processes of design that were carried out for the Hoover Dam. The preliminary design is mainly concerned with investigating the dam’s necessity all through the project development. It also outlines the functional examinations, operation estimation, recognition and system arrangement, the concept of support as well as maintenance (Dolen, 2011).

A pictorial illustration of the Hoover Dam while under construction is as below;

This is a stage of any given project that involves generating a noteworthy concept level of design that is meant to play the role of complementing to the project that is to be carried out. During this stage, assumptions are made that out of all the available choices or options, considerations have already been made and a decision to settle on a certain project has been arrived at. The project settled has been determined to certify the financial, monetary and environmental criteria. The Hoover Dam construction began in February 1930. The construction works were performed by the state commission for streams and water supply (Dunar & McBride, 2013). The main motivation behind its construction is that River Colorado, being one of the largest and unusual rivers in the world, would occasionally break its banks during spring and would the flood the zone. A lot of consultations were therefore made on how to handle the issue, thus the construction of the dam.

Once the preliminary design activities have been completed, there are a number of aspects that have to be put into consideration to organize the detailed design (Hiltzik, 2010). The aspects for consideration can be expressed in the below diagram;

The major design specifications for the construction of the Hoover Dam include the following;

• It has a height of 221 m
• It is close to 379 m wide.
• Has a thickness pf 379 m at its base and close to 203 m at its top.
• The construction period lasted close 4.5 years.
• The initial design and construction were all set out in the year 1930

Preliminary Design Activities for Hoover Dam

River diversion

Before beginning the construction, a proper planning for all the living and working conditions within the construction location had to be carried out. This means that all the constructors and workers did have the duty of making sure that all the project parts have been carefully considered. This should also include the river navigation that will in turn give space for the dam construction. (Kwak, 2014). A proper check for the type of soil where the dam would be built was also carried out by the engineers. The main idea during the construction was to channel the tunnels through the dividers within the dam and then directing Colorado River to the tunnels.

After directing the watercourse to the dam location, workers were able to exhume the location and also the power plant and dam construction. The valley restriction spread the construction operation up and down the stream and the huge effects of river fluctuation resulted to the preoccupation works of stream remarkably difficult. The engineers in charge of operations made 4 diversion tunnels. There were 2 tunnels on every side of River Colorado and also around the dam construction site (Kwak et al, 2014). There were 4 burrows that were built to perform other activities at those times when there is no redirection needed. The other 2 external tunnels were mainly to serve the purpose of massive spillage outlet in the dam. Massive pipes are the inserted to the internal tunnel. The purpose of that activity is to assist in moving water from the reservoir to the point of control. This activity and is achieved by the use of the outlet valves that are beneath the dam.

A Penstock is a pie like tunnel that is often used for transporting water to the power house from the reservoir. Its design should therefore be considered and perfectly developed. Penstock Installation is exceptionally carried out by giant pipes that transport water at a very high pressure in order to supply the power house. This enables it to rotate the power. In order to increase it strength and durability, the penstock for the dam was built in plate steel pipes of 3-inches. In order to manufacture and transport the finished pipe segment to the dam location, some uncommon gear was required (National Research Council, 2011). There was introduction of materials such as planers, rollers, x-ray equipment as well as welding materials that were used to carry out analysis of the welds. Besides the introduction of the penstock channels, the construction of the concrete placement was also being carried out at the same time. It is possible to obtain the friction losses for the penstock through the formula below;

Design Specifications for Hoover Dam – River Diversion

‘hf= f()   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Where:

f – Indicates the Friction constant

v – Indicates water Velocity flow

L – Indicates the penstock length

D – Indicates the Penstock diameter’

This is called the Darcy Formula.

Clearance of the ground water and rock.

During the initial stages of the design and construction of the dam, it is important to handle both the underground rocks and groundwater in order to provide room for a professional establishment of the dam. In order to construct the dam’s concrete establishment on the dam walls, it was important to do away with the amassed misfortune soil till when bedrock soil is reached. This was carried to ensure that a good amount of volume required for the dam is attained (Rogers, 2010). Clearance of underground soil were plainly done through digging the site. The purge vital foundation shake of the dam location had a protection with grout. A number of gaps were designed within the canyon and the divider. Any depression were also to be involved in the gout. This was performed in order to develop a steady shake and also due to the anticipation of water from leaking through the canyon shake. This was also to reduce the rising weight of water from leaking below the dam.

The design employed the adoption of two spillways in order to prevent the dam overtopping. The entrance of the spillway was located behind each bolster that runs to the parallel canyon dividers. The ways of entry are raised and discouraged subordinate on the water power that is within the lake and the flooding situations. Water that streams over the spillway will fall into the spillway metros and will with some interface to the burrow adjustment that is externally before finally returning to several channels of the dam (Sheer, Ulrich & Houck, 2012).

An illustration of the spillage and other related parameters is as shown below;

Figure 3: The spillage and its related parameters

In order to obtain the Hoover Dam storage energy. The formula illustrated below is applied.

Q=V× H × ρ × η × g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Design Specifications for Hoover Dam – Clearance of Ground Water and Rock

Where;

g- Acceleration gravity

V- Water volume

ρ- Water density

H- Head pressure elevation

η- System efficiency

This will help find the storage capacity of the dam.

In order to determine the daily power levels (kWh/day) that is required to pump a given amount of water on a daily basis, the following formula can be applied.

P_elec=  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Where

Q- The quantity of the water

H- The pressure on the Head

P_elec– the electrical power (in watts)  

η- System operation efficiency.

below is an illustration of the final design of the dam;

Figure 4: Final design of the Hoover Dam

For any given project development, it is quite important to perform an elaborative framework test for the stated project. This will help all the participants, including the client and the developers to make a determination of whether the venture will achieve the stated security benchmarks (Sneddon, 2015). This will also help reduce the chances of occurrence of a hazardous event. A system test that is properly performed as required will act as the basis on which assessments on whether the project conforms to the intended aims. This idea was put into practice by all the participants that had an involvement in the Hoover Dam construction. They came up with a need to increase the spillway capacity. Such a need would warranty achievement of a worthy hazard level when compared to the modern safety requirements for constructing a dam (Stevens, 2010).

The main idea of constructing the Hoover Dam was to ensure an inclusion of a number of highlights that would the whole project is perfectly optimized. The dam has been beneficial since it has a lot of uses. It is commonly used for water conservation, water supply for both industrial and residential uses, system handle and also for the generation of hydroelectric power. The dam is also consistently maintained to ensure that it meets its uses (Stoffle, 2016.). Being that it is one of the largest dams within the country, its capacity therefore helps guarantee enough water for use and preservation.

The process of optimization involves ensuring that the system fully utilizes the profitability of any given project. The Hoover Dam consists of a water reservoir that is actually the largest within the Colorado waterway framework (Wilbur & Ely, 2010). The dam equally has a very noteworthy bank. The dam is therefore able to accommodate up to 40% of the stream Colorado full capacity. The high water holding ability led to development of the Hoover control station that begun its operation around the year 1981. The control station has one 180MW hydro-generator and activities are controlled remotely by AGL hydro.

Hoover Dam Storage Energy Calculation

A power station constructed at the dam has the ability to perfectly carry out its operation without any restrictions. This is achieved when the water levels range from 434m to 484m beyond sea levels. The power station also makes releases that are used for irrigation. It also has a reservoir that acts a well-known trout fishery. It must be stated that the dam has greatly increased the food security levels within the region since it was commissioned. A better way to manage the flooding problem that has for long been a major issue in the region was finally put into practice (Wilbur & Mead, 2013).

Upon completion of the project and it is functioning as expected, an evaluation is conducted on the technical operation. Technical operation is basically evaluates the quantitative values and also predict and estimate values. These values are very significant for the evaluation because they describe and measure the operation of the hoover dam. The technical operations aspects which were considered here were; maintainability, human factors, dam capacity, dam components and the process time. Some of the expected results after the evaluation of the hoover dam are as below;

• The maintainability time for this dam was about three times every month
• Hoover dam qualitative necessity is to have an embankment dam and Hoover power station. After completion of the hoover dam, the present benchmarking illustrates that the embankment dam had a spillage amount of about 2800m³/s
• Human factors. The Hoover construction target a rate of error which is less than 10% per annum. And in the present benchmarking, the project has been shown approximately less than 14% rate of error per annum.
• Process time. The projected time to start construction of the hoover dam was 1925 and was anticipated to be finished as soon as possible but the actual dam construction started in the year 1930.  

Conclusion

This research paper basically carries out a critical analysis of the design processes that were carried out during the construction of the Hoover dam. The stages for consideration when carrying out the analysis are the preliminary and the detailed design stages (Wilson, 2015.). For the Hoover dam construction project, it was therefore an important practice to carry out a detailed analysis for both stages of the project. The analysis is important since it will help all the parties that are involved in the project to make a determination whether the intended objectives of the project will be met. Similarly, a system test is also carried out since it will enable the project operators to perform a risk analysis as well as put in place policies that will help in ensuring that such risks are reduced. Finally, an optimization process is also carried to make sure that there is optimum benefits being reaped from the hoover dam construction project (Wiltshire, Gilbert & Rogers, 2010). This article therefore has performed the required analysis for the whole design process to ensure that the concerned parties fully reap from the project.

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