INNOVATIVE STRUCTURAL MATERIALS AND DESIGNS

FOR DAM CONSTRUCTION

____________________

A Thesis Presented to the Administration and

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In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

by

Arnold A. Gamao

Decemeber 2021
 Chapter 1

Introduction

For centuries, dams have been a vital part of the water infrastructure, serving

many different purposes, including: Water supply, that have reservoirs store rainwater

before it is filtered and processed for human use. The reservoirs store rainwater to be

used in hydroelectric power stations to generate electricity, which is known as

hydroelectric power. Flood control, in which reservoirs regulate the flow of water into

rivers after heavy rain. Irrigation, in which water is stored in reservoirs and used to

irrigate land during periods of drought. Dams can be used to enhance navigation

conditions by raising the upstream water level. A dam can also be used to collect or

store water that can be dispersed equitably across several sites. Dams are used to hold

water, while floodgates and levees dikes are used to restrict or prohibit water flow into

certain land areas. Dams come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including gravity dams,

earth dams, rockfill dams, arch dams, buttress dams, steel dams, and timber dams.

Dam construction is carried out to achieve one or more of the aforementioned

objectives. Dams are man-made structures that hold water back from the source of a

river and create a reservoir in the valley behind them. They are often erected over arid

valleys or valleys with tiny streams to act as reservoirs for water brought in from other

parts of the world. With the construction of new dams, more issues, subjects, and

trends arise. Dam owners and operators throughout the world are concerned and

excited about maintaining old infrastructure, adopting new technologies, controlling risk,

and dealing with seismic hazards.

generation, aquaculture and fisheries, water supply for domestic and industrial use and

even benefits for navigation must be balanced against negative environmental and

socio-economic impacts. The future trends in dam construction in industrialized

countries are clear: most concrete dams will be designed using the cemented material

dams (CMD) concept, with the exception of large dams with heights greater than 100

meters, where concrete dams will continue to be built according to consultants’

intentions. Earth, rock fill, gravity, buttress, barrage, arch, and multiple arch dams are

the principal types of dams included in the ICOLD. These varieties may be found all

around the globe (CMD Prague, 3 rd July, 2017). Dams are essential to the survival of

towns and cities, since they provide water for commercial and household usage, irrigate

agricultural land, and generate electricity. The seven types of dams include diversion

dams, buttress dams, embankment dams, cofferdams, storage dams, detention dams,

and gravity dams. Every day, progress is made in the design, building, and operation of

dams and civil constructions. In this research, we will provide readers an knowledge

enhancement and give a glance into some of the key issues that are now occupying the

minds of the world’s future civil engineers.

Many freshmen civil engineering students are not much familiar with innovative

materials and designs in construction. It may lead to have a lack of information and

knowledge about materials and designs. Many questions are in their minds of how they

build Dams that researcher wants to discover and answer those important question and

information about dam construction and its innovative structural materials and designs.

Supporting and helping freshmen civil engineering students for their discoveries and
their knowledge enhancement about innovative structural materials and designs in dam

construction is one of the main reasons for pursuing this research. In this study,

researcher will conduct a study about the innovative structural materials and designs for

dam construction to fulfill the objectives and support engineering students. With the

construction of new dams, more issues, subjects, and trends arise. Dam owners and

operators throughout the world are concerned and excited about maintaining old

infrastructure, adopting new technologies, controlling risk, and dealing with seismic

hazards. By pursuing this research, this study can provide information and help to

support future civil engineers to familiarize and adapt the innovative ideas and materials

in constructing Dam. There are several benefits in conducting this research that can

support future civil engineers and researchers

The researcher will pursue this study to determine the innovative structural

materials and designs for constructing dam and discover how dams can resist water

pressure and why these structures won’t be fragile easily underneath water. When the

materials and designs identified, research will determine if there are similar and

differences between dam construction and building construction. This study might be a

great assistance or the source of solution and ideas to the topic outlined. It’s possible

for them to acquire knowledge from this study and use it as a guide to solve challenges.

That’s why this study must be accepted in order to make development and give benefits

to the students/learner, future researcher, and other beneficiaries that are in need of it in

the near future.

Lack of knowledge and information is the p

Purpose of the Study

The primary purpose of this quantitative research is to determine the innovative

structural materials and designs for constructing dam and to gain and share knowledge

to all civil engineering students and to other beneficiaries at University of Southern

Mindanao, Kabacan, North Cotabato. At this stage in research, the innovative structural

materials and designs for constructing dam will be generally defined as New and

original building materials and designs used for constructing dam.

Objectives

This study primarily aims to determine the innovative structural materials and

designs for dam construction.

The specific objectives of this research are as follows to:

A. Determine and identify the innovative structural materials and designs in

constructing a dam.

B. Identify how dam can resist water pressure and why these structures won’t be

fragile easily underneath water.

C. Determine the difference between the materials used in constructing dam and

buildings.
D. Determine the durability and strength of dam.

E. Gain information and knowledge to share with others.

Research Question

The following are the most important questions to answer and research.

1. What are the innovative structural materials and designs for dam construction?

2. Why do Dam structures won’t be easily brittle when submerged? Is it related to

the materials, designs, or process?

3. How can dam structures resist water pressure?

4. Are buildings innovative materials and designs the same as dam construction? 

Assumptions/Theoretical Limitations

Many civil engineering students are interested in the structure materials and

designs in different structures such as bridge, highway roads, buildings, and many

more. As they observe structures like famous ones, they get confused what are the

materials in that structure and process to fully build it. But in this research, researcher

will only study about the Dam construction.

Significance of the Study

The goal of this topic is to broaden people's understanding and provide resources for

future researchers. We can now decide creative materials and designs for dam building

and provide information and ideas about dam construction to the beneficiaries as a
result of this study. Conducting this study can help them as future civil engineers with

their studies and projects by providing a roadmap and a primary knowledge notion. This

study will be useful to the following beneficiaries:

1. Civil Engineering Students

This will help and support civil engineering students to identify the

innovative structural materials and designs for constructing dam. It will help them

to enhance their knowledge about construction and improve their project and

studies to know so they can explore more.

2. Other Students/Readers

There is always be a reader that even this study is nothing to do with

their studies or field, they always read it if it is interested and catchy. By reading

this research they will gain knowledge about how Dam built and its

characteristics. Once they will know the innovative structural materials and

designs for constructing dam, they can now share it to their friends, and family

members. These readers can be your friends, family, relatives, and schoolmates.

3. Future Student Researcher

By conducting another research that is relevant to this study, they can

use this research as a source of information, reference, and support their RRL’s.

4. Teachers

After reading this study, teachers of civil engineering students can now

gain and enhance their knowledge and ideas about structures, materials and

designs in Dam construction to share with their students and relatives.

Dam – A dam built to hold back water and raise its level, generating a reservoir that

may be used to produce energy or provide water.

Structural Materials - Structural materials are those whose main function is to transmit

or support force. Transportation, building, bodily protection, energy generation, and

other smaller structures, are all examples of possible applications. Metallic, ceramic,

polymeric, or a combination of these materials can be used for structural purposes.

Structural Designs – Structural design is a methodical investigation to get the most

cost-effective specification of a structure or structural element in order to safely bear the

projected load of structural parts while enduring the internal forces determined from the

structural analysis.

ICOLD – (International Commission on Large Dams) An worldwide non-governmental

organization committed to the exchange of professional expertise and information about

big dam design, building, maintenance, and effect.

CMD – (Cemented Material Dam).

Review of Related Literature

Introduction

This part examines those written works audit directed for dam innovative

structural materials and designs. In place with effectively help the requests of an

exploratory study. Furthermore, universal writing might have been consulted. This

section along these lines’ arrangements with documented evidence and study. A broad

literature search was conducted, through Internet sources.

Innovative Structural Materials and Designs for Dam Construction

Dams have been used to both store and generate energy for thousands of years.

However, after 1950, 90% of worldwide dam investments were built, including millions

of small and medium-sized dams as well as thousands of dams larger than 50 meters.

These dams have many different properties. This page provides background

information on dams and reservoirs, discusses why certain dam designs and building

methods are used, and emphasizes the significance of studying the environmental

effect of reservoirs. It attempts to predict the future of dams and evaluates whether

dams will help the world's poorest countries thrive in the future.

The demand for water as a natural resource is increasing globally, according to

the International Commission on Large Dams' (ICOLD) World Register of Dams (a non-

comprehensive database created in 1958 as a resource on dams around the world, last

updated in 2011), with the potential to grow 2-3 percent per year over the coming

decades. The future trends in dam construction in industrialized countries are clear:
most concrete dams will be designed using the cemented material dams (CMD)

concept, with the exception of large dams with heights greater than 100 meters, where

the concrete dam will still be built according to consultants' intentions. Earth, rock fill,

gravity, buttress, barrage, arch, and multiple arches are the basic types of dams

specified in the ICOLD. These varieties may be found all over the world. The current

increase in the expense of embankment and concrete dams as a result of challenging

and complicated locations will undoubtedly cause designers to reconsider the building

of additional CMDs. Recent improvements in cemented material dam technology in Iran

are addressed, and the benefits that led to the selection of CMD technology for a case

study, the Sinesar dam, are studied. This dam is located in the northwestern part of

Iran, in a pluvial zone. Several dam styles, such as concrete gravity dams, embankment

dams with asphalt cores, and others, are investigated based on the features of the local

site. Based on the site's characteristics and taking into account the borrow area,

foundation, hydrogeology, seepage, and other aspects of dam engineering, CMD

technology is recommended for the case study in question. It is clear that this sort of

dam has a bright future in the United States.

According to Uchimura et al. (2006), the cemented sand and gravel materials can

be classified as "an intermediate between concrete and soils," but their concepts of

mixture design, quality control, and construction methods have different origins in

concrete and geotechnical engineering, respectively. The geotechnical engineers

invented the cemented material idea, which is a novel form of material that combines

relatively low-grade aggregates, water, and a lower cement concentration than

traditional concrete. Such materials can be put and mechanically compacted as soil
constructions. Furthermore, cemented material dam technology has been developed in

China, Japan, the United States, Iran, and other countries for improved safety, speed of

construction, inexpensive investment, and environmental friendliness.

Noorzad et al. (2016) recently optimized the CMD cross section using the

reliability assessment theory. In order to evaluate the safety factor against sliding, an

appropriate approach for dealing with the fuzzy uncertainty caused by a lack of

complete information was proposed. The uncertainties in the input variables were

managed in Monte-Carlo simulation to find the ideal form of CMD by treating the safety

factor as a fuzzy number. To attain this goal, 700,000 tests on the dam's stability

assessments were conducted. The two-dimensional model of CMD's optimal section

may be used to investigate any optimum combination of parameters required for dam

building. CMD can fail in three ways: lateral sliding failure, overturning failure, and

bearing capacity failure. The sliding resistance of the dam's base must be larger than

the lateral force pressing on it for a CMD to work. As a result, the factor of safety (FS)

against sliding is T/P, where T is the friction between the dam's bottom and the

foundation soil, and P is the lateral force acting on the dam body. CMD toppling over as

it spins around the toe of the building is referred to as overturning.

During the 22nd icold meeting in Barcelona (Spain) in June 2016, the author

presented a preliminary exercise on the cost of several RCC dam design options. The

apparent width of the dam has been used as the unit of comparison in this illustration.

This figure is determined by the ratio of the dam volume to the area of the upstream

face, and it indicates the dam's size. The major benefit of employing this parameter is

that it allows you to account not just the cost of the concrete mixes used in the dam
core, but also the cost of the dam faces when calculating the overall unit cost of the

dam. For nearly all dam sizes, as shown in this diagram, the 'all-RCC' dam idea

outperforms the 'compound-RCC' dam concept in terms of cost. As a point of

comparison, the greater cost of typical CVC dams has also been provided. It should be

emphasized, however, that if an RCC dam of any sort is not planned as a basic

structure and/or is not erected using proper construction methods, it may up cost much

more than a regular CVC dam.

The Qianwei dike, which will be erected along the Minjiang River in Sichuan

Province, China, will have a length of 2.77 km and a maximum height of 14.1 m, and will

be built on a sand and gravel base. On comparable foundations, concrete-faced rockfill

dams (CFRDs) have been used with unsatisfactory success due to overtopping and

leakage issues. As a result, a CSGR dike has been chosen to increase the safety. It

depicts a cross-section of the Qianwei dike, which will begin construction in 2016. Also,

in Yunnan Province, the Naheng Reservoir has a dam height of 71.4 meters. Because

there is no natural sand or gravel around the dam, cemented artificial sand and rock

(CASR) has been considered. The results suggest that constructing a CASR dam is

substantially easier than constructing an RCC dam, with the former potentially costing

more than 10% less. CASR has far superior qualities than CSGR, which incorporates

natural sand and gravel from the riverbed, notably in terms of durability. The strength of

CASR is much higher and more consistent than that of CSGR, and its quality is much

easier to manage. For most low dams, the cross-section of a CASR dam might be

similar to that of a gravity dam.

new design concept offered. The form design of a CMD is based on the notions of

optimizing the dam structure to make better use of local materials and selecting

appropriate material for various areas of the dam in order to achieve better structural

function. It is not necessarily required to have a "symmet-rical" or "trapezoidal" form. For

all load conditions, it is preferable to maintain the material of the CMD inner dam body

dry and under compressive stress. For the dam's outside components with probable

tensile stress during construction or operation, a material with strong tensile strength,

such as enhanced CSGR, concrete, or reinforced concrete, can be employed.

http://www.hydrocoop.org/dam-design-construction-reservoirs-balancing-lakes/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318780374_An_innovative_approach_toward_

dam_design_and_construction_in_Iran

https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/features/featurealternative-designs-for-dam-

construction/

Review of Relevant Research Literature

Methodology

This paper aims to determine the innovative structural materials and designs

For dam construction in North Cotabato. This study is quantitative in nature.

This chapter deals with the design of the study, the role of the researcher and the

respondents involved. Data collection and analysis is included. Trustworthiness and

credibility of the study explains together with its ethical consideration. All individuals that

were concern with this study was also included as well as the process of ethical

considerations.

Research Design

This research will be a qualitative research without any respondents to interview

face-to-face or in telephone.

Role of the Researcher

The researcher is expected to look up and acquire information and answers for

the research objectives, then encode and provide accurate and clear information to the

audiences. We will gather our data by conducting in-depth individual interviews with

participants. An expert or professional data analyst will be analyzing the data that will be

gathered from audio recordings after which, we will construct our personal insights.

Data Collection
 Researchers employed a qualitative research method to obtain data and

information from a variety of sources, including the internet, books, encyclopedias, and

other information sources that might be used as a reference for this study without

interviewing respondents.

Data Analysis

In this study, the researcher will use content analysis to examine data. The

researchers will make a list of all of the key information that they obtained from various

sources and references during their investigation. For data organization, the collected

information will go through an encoding procedure.