Design Process of Hume Dam

Running head: DESIGN PROCESS OF HUME DAM
DESIGN PROCESS OF HUME DAM
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1DESIGN PROCESS OF HUME DAM
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Preliminary Design..............................................................................................................3
Detailed design....................................................................................................................6
System test, validation and optimization processes.............................................................7
Evaluation..........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion:........................................................................................................................13
Bibliography......................................................................................................................14

2DESIGN PROCESS OF HUME DAM
Introduction
The Hume Dam was constructed after long deliberations had been made in regards to its
conceptual design. The design analyzed the construction process of the dam, its performance
measurement, systems planning, and the requirements of system operation, feasibility study as
well as the dam analysis. The Hume Dam was designed primarily for the reason of solving
problems of irrigation for people living along the Murray River (Guest 2017). There was the
need to bridge the gap that was created by the need of more than 1,417,188 mega liters of water.
In a wrap, the other reasons that prompted the designing of this dam also included supply of
water for industrial as well as industrial uses, irrigation uses, generation of hydro-power, and
mitigation of floods.
(Figure1: Hume Dam Image)
(Source: Banks and Czaplicki 2014))

3DESIGN PROCESS OF HUME DAM
According to the Hume’s Dam functional analysis, it is clear that its construction and
design began in 1919 and included major components such as dam and spillways reservoir and
power station. This shows that the key operational needs or requirements for the project were the
Hume reservoir, dam and spillways as well as the power station. The Hume hydro-energy station
has a 58 megawatts capacity and is used for the generation of electricity in the peak-load period.
In terms of maintenance, there is the estimation of the result of extreme floods on the Hume
catchment (Haghshenas et al. 2016). There is a routine inspection of the Hume dam which in the
past has shown that leakage and water pressure leads to the slight movement of the dam on its
foundation thus bringing about anxiety among the people that the dam was headed to collapse.
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the preliminary design as well as detailed
design phases of the Hume Dam. It is going to pay attention to system test, evaluation and
validation processes employed as well as any type of optimization that was required.
Preliminary Design
The preliminary design of the Hume dam has been well handled and all the contents of
such a plan taken into consideration. Firstly, the project has pointed out that the Hume Dam
obtained its name from Hamilton Hume who was an explorer upstream of Airbury in 1824. Its
design and construction started in 191 with the sole aim of supplying water as a way of
encouraging new settlements in the valley as well as bringing prosperity amongst the locals
(Banks and Czaplicki 2014)). The New South Wales (NSW) Department of public works
designed and constructed the concrete gravity which includes a 1.2 km earth-fill dam that had a
concrete core wall.