Quality Control of Dam Monitoring Measurements

Abstract

The safety control of large dams requires the measurement of some important quantities that characterize their behavior (like absolute and relative displacements, strains and stresses in the concrete, discharges through the foundation, etc.) and on visual inspections of the structures. In the more important dams, the analysis of the measured data and their comparison with results of mathematical or physical models is determinant in the safety control decision process. The quality of the measurements assumes an important role in a dam’s safety assessment, namely in the detection of anomalous behavior related either to accident scenarios or to more delayed deterioration processes. In monitoring system devices operated manually, this quality depends on the order of magnitude of the measured quantity, on the technical characteristics of the measurement device and on the skills of the operator. This paper deals with the study of the direct influence of these factors on the quality of the monitoring system exploitation and indirectly on the global dam safety control process. The results of an analysis of the repeatability and reproducibility of measurements in a concrete dam are presented, allowing us to estimate the overall measurement error.