Roadford Dam, Devon

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Roadford Dam

Roadford Dam is a 41m high rockfill dam with an upstream membrane of asphaltic concrete that was completed in Devon in 1990. An important design feature of the dam is the junction of the asphaltic membrane and the cut-off structure at the upstream toe of the dam. To minimise differential movements in this region, a zone of stiffer sand waste fill was used between the concrete cut-off structure and a softer low grade rockfill used for the construction of the main dam body.

The role of GCG was to undertake detailed finite element analyses of the dam both during construction and reservoir impounding, and in particular to examine the effectiveness of the sand waste fill in reducing differential movements during reservoir impounding. The dam was heavily instrumented enabling a detailed comparison between predictions and measurements to be made.

The dam suffered from substantial post-construction settlements which could not be explained by a conventional creep theory. Thus GCG was also retained to assist in the interpretation of the post-construction settlement data and to provide explanations for the observed movements.

Publications

Kovacevic, N., Potts, D.M. and Vaughan, P.R., (1994). Finite element analysis of a rockfill dam. Proc. 8th Int. Conf. Comp. Meths Advs Geomechs, Vol. 3, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA, 2459-2464.

Vaughan, P.R., (1994). Criteria for the use of weak and weathered rock for embankment fill, and its compaction control. State-of-the-art address, Proc. 13th Int. Conf. Soil Mech. & Foundn. Engng., New Delhi, Vol. 6, 195-206.

Location

Devon, UK

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