System Design Process of Dartmouth Dam

System Design Process of Dartmouth Dam 1
SYSTEM DESIGN PROCESS OF DARTMOUTH DAM
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System Design Process of Dartmouth Dam 2
Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
Preliminary design.........................................................................................................................4
Detailed design...............................................................................................................................4
System test, evaluation and validation and optimization processes..........................................5
Evaluation.......................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion......................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................10

System Design Process of Dartmouth Dam 3
Introduction
The Dartmouth Dam is a massive embankment dam that is filled with rock and a chute spillway
that is normally uncontrolled across several rivers. The rivers that goes through it are the Gibbo,
Dart and Mitta Mitta rivers. There are also a number of small rivers that act as distributaries and
also the Morass Creek. The Dam was built on the north east of Victoria State close to the mount
of Bogong, in the country of Australia. The dam was built to serve several purposes. Some of the
uses include supply and conservation of water used both for the domestic and industrial duties,
hydroelectric generation of power and also for irrigation process. It has an impounded reservoir
known as the Dartmouth Reservoir and is also commonly known as lake Dartmouth (Arthington
& Pusey, 2013). There also is a Dartmouth generation power station that generates power to the
national grid that is situated close to the walls of the dam. Its main water supply is the river
Murray that has a length of close to 2500km that rises from the Alps of Australia and discharges
into the sea in South Australia.
This report paper aims at carrying out a critical exploration of the design process of the
Dartmouth dam construction. A detailed analysis of the design process that is mainly focused on
the conceptual design stages of the construction of the dam had been carried out. When carrying
out the analysis, some of the factors that had been put into consideration included the following;
functional analysis, system planning, performance measurement, system operation requirements,
identification of needs, the concept of support as well as the concept of maintenance (Barrett,
2014). Given that the dam was originally meant to have a water storage capacity of close to 6.25
million Megalitres, there was also a possibility that it would have provided the southern
Australia with additional control over the portion of water. It is therefore necessary to conduct a
proper system design process of the given project in order to achieve its full potential.

System Design Process of Dartmouth Dam 4
Preliminary design
Preliminary design is a stage of a project that involves creation of a greater level of design
concepts that are meant to be the compliments of the project that is intended to be carried out.
This design phase assumes that all the feasible decisions or selections have already been well-
thought-out and that one project has been selected to be carried out. The selected project is one
that meets the environmental, financial and economic standards. This given project of the
Dartmouth dam was initiated in February 1973. Construction works were performed by the state
rivers and water supply commission (Blanchard et al, 2010). The dam has a catchment that is
located within the Victoria. The area of the catchment is approximated to be 3600km2.
Detailed design
Once the preliminary stage has been completed, it is then developed into a package of detailed
design of engineering. This given detailed engineering design is considered as a primary tool that
is used for developing a given set of specifications. These set of specifications should be best
fitted for soliciting or acquiring international tenders from different engineering contractors.
Most importantly, at the conclusion of the detailed design phase of the project, the client will
also be able to have a proper estimate of the costs that will be reliable (Blyth et al, 2013). This is
necessary when in need of a reliable cost that should be submitted for the evaluation of tenders.
The Dartmouth dam was designed into finer details in order to allow for easier construction and
determination of the total costs that would be involved. The wall of the dam consisted of a rock-
fill embankment that has a height of 180m. The major components used for construction were;
 10.5 million m3 of rock
 The core had 2.8 million m3 of earth
 Filter material of 0.8 million m3 generated from crushed quarried rock.