Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887

by Various

But this information will be of but little service to the engineer without an investigation of the loss due to evaporation and absorption, varying with the season of the year and the more or less degree of saturation of the soil; the amount of absorption depending upon the character of the ground, dip of strata, etc., the hydrographic area being, as a rule, by no means equal to the topographic area of a given basin. From this cursory view of the preliminary investigations necessary can be realized what difficulties must attend the design of dams for reservoirs in newly settled or uncivilized countries, where there are no data of this nature to go on, and where if maps exist they are probably of the roughest description and uncontoured; so that before any project can be even discussed seriously special surveys have to be made, the results of which may only go to prove the unsuitability of the site under consideration as regards area, etc. The loss due to evaporation, according to Mr. Hawksley, in this country amounts to a mean of about 15 in.; this and the absorption must vary with the geological conditions, and therefore to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion regarding the amount of rainfall actually available for storage, careful gaugings have to be made of the stream affected, and these should extend over a lengthened period, and be compounded with the rainfall. A certain loss of water, in times of excessive floods, must, in designing a dam, be ever expected, and under favorable conditions may be estimated at 10 per cent. of the total amount impounded.

As regards the choice of position for the dam of a reservoir, supposing that it is intended to impound the water by throwing an obstruction across a valley, it may be premised that to impound the largest quantity of water with the minimum outlay, the most favorable conditions are present where a more or less broad valley flanked by steep hills suddenly narrows at its lower end, forming a gorge which can be obstructed by a comparatively short dam. The accompanying condition is that the nature of the soil, i.e., the character, strata, and lie of the rock, clay, etc., as the case may be, is favorable to assuring a good foundation. In Great Britain, as a rule, dams for reservoirs have been constructed of earthwork with a puddle core, deemed by the majority of English engineers as more suitable for this purpose than masonry.

Earthwork, in some instances combined with masonry, was also a form usual in the ancient works of the East, already referred to; but it would appear from the experience of recent years that masonry dams are likely to become as common as those of earthwork, especially in districts favorable to the construction of the former, where the natural ground is of a rocky character, and good stone easily obtained.

As to the stability of structures of masonry for this purpose, as compared with earthwork, experience would seem to leave the question an open one. Either method is liable to failure, and there certainly are as many cases on record of the destruction of masonry dams as there are of those constructed of earthwork, as instanced in Algeria within the past few years. As regards masonry dams, the question of success does not seem so much to depend upon their design, as far as the mere determination of the suitable profile or cross section is concerned, as that has been very exhaustively investigated, and fairly agreed upon, from a mathematical point of view, but to be principally due to the correctness of the estimate of the floods to be dealt with, and a sufficient provision of by-wash allowed for the most extreme cases; and, lastly, perhaps the most important of all, the securing a thoroughly good foundation, and a careful execution of the work throughout.

These remarks equally apply to earthwork dams, as regards sufficient provision of by-wash, careful execution of work, and security of foundation, but their area of cross section, supposing them to be water-tight, on account of the flatness of their slopes and consequent breadth of base, is, of course, far in excess of that merely required for stability; but in these latter, the method adopted for the water supply discharge is of the very greatest importance, and will be again referred to.

Before commencing the excavation for the foundations of a dam, it is most essential that the character of the soil or rock should be examined carefully, by sinking a succession of small shafts, not mere borings, along the site, so that the depth to which the trench will have to be carried, and the amount of ground water likely to be encountered, can be reliably ascertained, as this portion of the work cannot be otherwise estimated, and as it may bear a very large proportion of the total expense of construction, and in certain cases may demonstrate that the site is altogether unsuitable for the proposed purpose.

The depth to which puddle trenches have been carried, for the purpose of penetrating water-bearing strata, and reaching impenetrable ground, in some cases, has been as much as 160 ft. below the natural surface of the ground, and the expense of timbering, pumping, and excavation in such an instance can be easily imagined. This may be realized by referring to Fig. 4, giving a cross-section of the Yarrow dam, in which the bottom of the trench is there only 85 ft. below the ground surface. In the Dale Dyke dam, Fig. 2, the bottom of the trench was about 50 ft. below the ground surface.

There is one other point which should be mentioned in connection with the form of the base of the puddle trench—that instead of cutting the bottom of the trench at the sides of the valley in steps, it should be merely sloped, so that the puddle, in setting, tends to slide down each inclined plane toward the bottom of valley, thereby becoming further compressed; whereas, should the natural ground be cut in steps, the puddle in setting tends to bulge at the side of each riser, as it may be termed, and so cause fissures. It will be noticed that the slopes of these earthwork dams vary from 7 to 1 to 2 to 1.

The depths to which some puddle trenches are carried has been objected to by some engineers, and among them Sir Robert Rawlinson, as excessive and unnecessary, and, in the opinion of the latter, the same end might be obtained by going down to a depth say of 30 ft. only, and putting in a thick bed of concrete, and also carrying up the concrete at the back of the puddle trench, with a well for collecting water, and a pipe leading the same off through the back of the dam to the down stream side. An arrangement of this kind is shown in the Yarrow dam, Fig. 4.

The thickness of the puddle wall varies considerably in the different examples given in the diagrams before you, a fair average being the Row bank of the Paisley Water Works, Fig. 6; and although in instances of dams made early in the century, such as the Glencorse dam—Fig. 5—of the Edinburgh Water Works, the puddle was of very considerable thickness, and it would appear rightly so. This practice does not seem to have been followed in many cases, as, for instance, again referring to the Dale Dyke dam, Fig. 2, where the thickness of the top was only 4 ft., with a batter of 1 in 16 downward, giving a thickness of 16 ft. at the base. For a dam 95 ft. in height this is very light, compared with that of the Vehui dam at Bombay, of which the engineer was Mr. Conybeare—Fig. 7—where the puddle wall is 10 ft. wide at the top, with a batter downward of 1 in 8, the Bann reservoir—Fig. 8—of Mr. Bateman's design, where the puddle is 8 ft. broad at the top, and other instances. The same dimension was adopted for the puddle wall of the Harelaw reservoir, at Paisley, by Mr. Alexander Leslie, an engineer of considerable experience in dam construction.