Concrete Dam Foundations, between a Rock and a Hard Place, between Geology and Engineering Webinar

In many organizations, any issues dealing with rock foundations are handed off to the geologists, and engineers rarely get involved.  Although geologists are an essential part of the evaluation team, some may lack the training and experience necessary to perform a complete evaluation of concrete dam foundations, which often requires knowledge of concepts typically covered in graduate level courses on rock mechanics.

This webinar provides an overview of the basic concepts required for evaluating concrete dam foundations from a rock mechanics perspective, including rock mass deformability, rock mass erodibility, interstitial water pressures, shear strength, and foundation rock block stability.  In addition, several case histories of concrete dam foundation failures and incidents are reviewed to highlight the failure modes, and the importance of doing an adequate job of evaluating these types of risks.  An in-depth case study of a roller-compacted concrete gravity dam foundation is also presented.