Buttress dam

Buttresses and an arch of the Roselend Dam in France

A buttress dam or hollow dam is a dam with a solid, water-tight upstream side that is supported at intervals on the downstream side by a series of buttresses or supports.[1] The dam wall may be straight or curved. Most buttress dams are made of reinforced concrete and are heavy, pushing the dam into the ground. Water pushes against the dam, but the buttresses are inflexible and prevent the dam from falling over.[2]

Buttress or hollow gravity dams were originally built to retain water for irrigation or mining in areas of scarce or expensive resources but cheap labour. A buttress dam is a good choice in wide valleys where solid rock is rare.[3]

As designs have become more sophisticated, the virtues and weaknesses of the buttress type dams have become apparent. The Romans were the first to use buttresses to increase the stability of a dam wall.[4] Buttress dams of slab concrete construction became popular in the United States in the early 20th Century with the patented process of Norwegian-American civil engineer Nils F. Ambursen.[5][6][7]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Glossary". Retrieved 2007-02-05.
  2. ↑ "Buttress dam forces". Retrieved 2007-02-05.
  3. ↑ "Introduction to Buttress Dams". Retrieved 2007-02-05.
  4. ↑ "Key Developments in the History of Buttress Dams". Archived from the original on 2008-06-03. Retrieved 2010-09-04.
  5. ↑ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/pa3237/
  6. ↑ http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/01000497.pdf
  7. ↑ Edward Wegmann, Masonry dams; a historical, theoretical and practical review and discussion, p.33, American Society of Engineering Contractors, Paper No. 34, New York, 1912

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.