Grande Dixence Dam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Grande Dixence Dam - Essay Example To complete the construction of the dam’s wall about 6,000,000m3 of concrete was required (Berlow 67). The construction of Grand Dixence dam involved four major construction stages. The first stage involved the erecting of 182 meters high wall, which is about 0.64 of the dam’s full height. In the first stage about 1.85 million meters cubed of concrete was used, which is about 0.3 of dam’s total concrete volume. During the construction process, to ensure sound forces transfer and interlinkage between concrete â€Å"†¦ previous stage to the following, downstream face of the dam in the first, the second and third stages were completed step by step for which the surfaces of the of the vertical planes of the steps were provided with projections† (Landau & Mgalobelov 102). In all the four stages the construction process of the dam had to take into account any possibility of tensile stress occurrence due to â€Å"†¦ partial filling of the reservoir on the stress strain state of the dam† (Landau and Mgalobelov 102). As such, the construction of the dam h ad to be executed