Abstract:
Satpara Dam Hydro Power Project (13.2 MW) was the chosen case
study. It is a zoned earthen embankment with an upstream impervious
blanket and a relatively pervious foundation conditions.
The study aims at quantifying the seepage through the dam body, with
emphasis on its influences on the dam slope stability and the hydropower
production.
Geoslope office packages, SEEP/W and SLOPE/W were utilized for
the Quantification of seepage and the slope stability analysis respectively.
The results were assessed against the conventional Terzaghi’s Equation for
seepage and relative FOS standards for the stability analysis.
A similar trend was obtained for three different stability analysis
approaches, with the FOS values well above the established standards for
different loading conditions.
Seepage was concluded to be influential on the slope stability, the
average FOS values from the three methods of analysis were discussed in
the light of phreatic line estimations for the analysis and the acceptability
was confirmed over relative possible hazard criteria.
At the end, a 2.07% increase was indicated through the incremental
involvement of seepage in the mean monthly discharges for the power andiv
energy computations. It was thus concluded that the influence of seepage on
Mega projects may as well be neglected but projects such as the case study
taken might undergo an appreciable economic appraisal
