2012 – Diversion Design for Dam Construction

Tim Griggs and Richard Herweynen

The river diversion is an important aspect to be considered in the design of a dam. It generally consists of an upstream cofferdam, river diversion conduit and downstream cofferdam and allows the dam to be constructed in a dry section of river.
This paper reviews the diversion design adopted at three recent Australian roller compacted concrete (RCC) dams and comments on the effectiveness of the design in providing risk mitigation during the construction of each of these dams. The dams considered are Paradise Dam (2005), Meander Dam (2007) and Wyaralong Dam (2011).
Rather than selecting an arbitrary design flood for the diversion, a risk-based assessment was used that generally resulted in a relatively low design capacity. Even though there were cases where the diversion capacity was exceeded, it is considered that the risk based design process provided an economical diversion design for these recent Australian dams.
Keywords: Diversion, roller compacted concrete dam, RCC.

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