Gravity Dam with Foundation Problems

DAMDATA is used to monitor a dam whose foundations’ characteristics have raised doubts regarding their stability during its lifetime.

On reaching higher reservoir levels than in previous years, new filtrations have been detected downstream of the structure together with a raise in piezometric levels. Therefore we have decided to undertake a continuous control of all the variables and prepare auscultation reports every 2 weeks.

As the dam is not automated, the reading data is manually loaded up weekly onto the DAMDATA database, directly from the dam’s computer. The owner and outside experts have immediate access to the data for review. Graphs are automatically created with the latest data incorporated into them for the periodic reports.

The control programme established allows all the information on dam behaviour to be managed. Anomalous values are detected automatically with the different configured alarm levels. This way we can effectively control the  stability of the foundations when facing a raise in the reservoir levels, giving an added value to the auscultation system installed.