Bureau of Reclamation Current Practices of Concrete Structures on Rock Foundations,

The Bureau is currently in the processes of rewriting criteria and preparing designs standards and guidelines for concrete dams. The large thick books, Design of Arch Dams, Design of gravity Dams, and Designs of Small Dams, are to become Design Standards. We are going to put out a standard for everything. The Bureau and others have similar criteria for retaining walls, that is, a safety factor of 1-12. The training walls and channel floor are all self-contained. So far as concrete structures are concerned, the following comments will address mainly concrete dams. The Bureau has about 55 concrete dams of which 28 are arch. For concrete dams, we have basically four types of structures, arch or gravity, and new or existing structures. The criteria differs somewhat for each one. An extensive discussion will not be presented about United States Bureau of Reclamation USBR arch dams except to show their influence on the design and analyses of gravity dams using those concepts. From the structural analysis of arch dams, the designer becomes very cognizant of three-dimensional, homogeneous, isotropic structures.