Appalachian Region Floating Bulkhead
« Return to Project Search
This hydroelectric facility in the Appalachian Region has nine spillway bays with large slide gates. To repair gates, a floating bulkhead was required to dewater each bay. Five spillway bays have a recessed ogee crest, and an extension was required on the bottom caisson to dewater the bays. The far-left bay required custom design of the abutment seat for mounting the bulkhead on this bay. This seat had to be designed to fit over the buttress on the lower half of the abutment wall.
Part of the design involved completing a high-resolution underwater scan of the dam and building a computer model of the spillway geometry to verify sizes of spillway intakes. This information was critical to size a common extension that would fit in all five bays with the recessed ogee crest. Because all five bays were slightly different sizes, significant effort was required to design a seal system that would work in all five bays.
Ayres provided the plans to Steel-Fab, which use them to fabricate the floating bulkhead for the dam owner.
Project Information
Client's NameSteel-Fab, Inc.
LocationAppalachian Region, US
Primary ServiceRiver Engineering + Water Resources
MarketIndustrial + Manufacturing
