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Title: Future Trends in Roller Compacted Concrete Dam Construction

Author(s): M. R. H. Dunston

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 144

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 307-324

Keywords: arch dams; blast furnace slag; construction; dams; fly ash; gravity dams; mix proportioning; pozzolans; roller compacted concrete; Construction

DOI: 10.14359/4505

Date: 3/1/1994

Abstract:
Roller compacted concrete (RCC) became an accepted method for dam construction during the latter half of the 1980s and during the early 1990s there has been a very rapid growth in this form of dam. High dams up to 200 m in height and containing several million m 3 of concrete are now being designed. Paper describes the development of RCC dams over the last decade and shows how there has been a move away from the early RCC dams that contained a relatively low cementitious content toward a dam that contains higher cementitious contents, usually with a high proportion of pozzolan. Although a number of different pozzolans have been used, the significant majority of RCC dams have contained low-lime fly ash. The in-situ properties that have been achieved in RCC dams already in service for a number of years have been found to be suitable for gravity dams more than 200 m high. Arch-gravity RCC dams have been completed with heights approaching 80 m, together with a thick-arch RCC dam of a comparable height. It is considered that the traditional concrete dam will be superseded within the not-too-distant future by the RCC method of construction, and on a number of sites where rock-fill dams were originally planned, RCC dams will eventually be constructed.