Estimating an appropriate plastic concrete mixing design for cutoff walls to control leakage under the earth dam.

Abstract

Making use of concrete materials in cut-off walls, because of their low permeability and standing high Hydraulic Gradient caused by underground drainage, has attracted great amount of attention. Using ordinary concrete with high elasticity modulus, compared to other materials may accompany with problems including brittleness of cutoffs due to dynamic stresses. <br />To solve this problem, adding a certain percentage of clay (Bentonite) to plastic concrete materials reduces the concrete hardness as well as its elasticity coefficient, resulting in better ductility. Adding Ebonite (clay and excavation mud) decreases the possibility of hydraulic failure and cracking.<br />In this article components of the plastic concrete and parameters which affect in properties and manners of its mixing design is analyzed. Based on the results that have been obtained from experiments on plastic concrete samples which have various mixing plans, diagrams have been presented to obtain a mixing plan of ideal plastic concrete with different characteristics which result in determining a key relationship in order to estimate mixing plan of an appropriate plastic concrete of cutoffs to control leakage under the dam. While under current situation, not using these relationships to estimate mixing plan of an appropriate plastic concrete of cutoffs in order to control leakage under the dam is costly and time consuming with considerable amount of errors.