THE HOOVER DAM

Hoover Dam, formerly known as the Boulder Dam is a dam in

gravitational arc, made of reinforced concrete, closing the gorge Black
Canyon of the Colorado River on the border between Arizona and Nevada
states of the United States America.
Boulder Dam construction, later called Hoover Dam after the 31th american
president Herbert Hoover, began in 1931 and lasted five years until 1936,
during the period known as the Great Depression. Construction of thedam
was the result of a massive federal and local effort and cost the lives of
over a hundred of people.

With a length of 379 meters and a height of 221 meters, for 22 years
Hoover Dam was highest dam in the world. On its upper edge there is a
road with a 5 m width, joining Arizona and Nevada, respetively the two
sides of Atlantic and Pacific oceans coasts, between San Francisco and
New York. In the region with the most dry and hot climate of the United
States, of northern Sonora and southern desert Mojave Desert, The Hoover
Dam provides water for millions of people. Dam construction has formed
lake Mead, which is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world.
Chief Executive of the whole project was the engineer Frank Crowe, one of
the most outstanding hydroengineers of the time, which made it possible to
complete the project by actual implementation of many of the most
important of his inventions. British American architect Gordon Kaufmann,
established in 1914 in the United States known for its architectural work
earlier, especially in the manner of Art Deco Design, realized refining

stylistic elegance of the entire complex of buildings and dam in the same
manner, previously known as Modern Art.
With a capacity of 35,000 km3, a water depth of 180 meters, an area of 640
km2, Shedding capacity of 11,000 m3/s and a width at the base of 200
meters, the Hoover Dam provided totally different perspectives on capacity
of man to build something so big that the rest seemed like a drop in the
ocean. Although it has since been surpassed in height, volume and length
by other dams, many belonging to Emerging economies such as Tajikistan
or Brazil, the American dam remained as a legend, a pioneer, if one can
say so.

Hoover Dam likely would not have been built if the situation were
substantive same, but in another country. Opened in 1936, it was declared
necessary in 1922,alternating floods and droughts affecting the population
in Mohave, Arizona. As a result,initial plans for the largest concrete dam
until then began to appear.
Although some technologies had not yet been tested on a scale so
large, that did not stop the project. What was nearlt to stop construction
was The Great Financial Depression of 1929-1933, when the US market
was simply collapsed. Although priorities seemed to have changed
completely, President Franklin Roosevelt just introduced "The New Deal"

economic reform that could involve State in the market but not only, in
order to avoid collapse completely. The New Deal (New agreement) was
also meant to help create new jobs based on state projects; and what
project will need more workers than Hoover Dam?

Five years and 49 million dollars later, after changing the course of a
river and a
organized workers union strike, the dam was given to use. President
Roosevelt, who took over this position the most in the entire history of
America was that one that dedicated dam to President Herbert Hoover. The
name of the great damwould change from Boulder in Hoover, the original
name beingthat of the nearest town. Although criticized for the simple and
boring look, Dam Hoover had the best form to resist: it was curved, with the
convex sidetowards the water, width decreasing exponentially from the
bottom to the top.
Dam operation simply changed the life of the inhabitants around who
could make better use of the territory they lived in.

During the works, the engineers were all hit by technical problems, given
that they performed for the first time works of such proportions. One
problem was cooling the concrete. To accelerate the cooling process, each
form that pour concrete was equipped with a cooling system, made of pipes
that circulate water from the river. The cement used will not harden
completely sooner than 500 years.

Electricity began to be delivered on 26 October 1936. Currently, it

operates 17 full power generators outputting 2074 MW. Untill 1991, a
manual control system was used, then the system has been computerized.
The dam is 201 meters thick at the base and measures a height of 221
meters, or compared to other terms, the height of a 70 storey clouds
scratches. Top has a length of 379 meters and a width of 14 meters. To the
north, the dam formed lake Mead, one of the largest lakes man-made. It
measures a length of 185 km with a coastline of 900 kilometers. Almost
4,000 of the workers which build Hoover Dam were Boulder city dwellers.
The first concrete was poured into the lake on June 6 1933, 18
months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts, the
potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a
serious problem. The engineers calculated that if the dam was built in one
continuous casting concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the tensions
would produce results that would lead cracks that would collapse the dam.

Instead,on the land where the dam was designed, were marked rectangles
with sides of 15 m and 1.5 m in which they poured the concrete.
Each five meters form contained a series of steel pipes of 25 mm, in which
the first time cold water from the riverwas flowing, then was headed in ice
water from the refrigeration plants. Once an individual block was finished
and stopped contracting,pipes were filled with mortar. Grout was also used
tofill the spaces between the thin columns that were grooved to increase
power junction.The concrete was delivered in large steel pails almost 2,1 m
in diameter. Crowe received two patents for their design. These buckets,
weighing 18 t when they were full, filled up from two massive concrete
plants from Nevada, and were delivered to site in special wagons. Buckets
were then suspended in aerial ropeways, which have been used to provide
the bucket for a particular column of the casting. How necessary degree of
aggregate concrete was different, depending on placement in the dam
(from gravel up to 230 mm diameter), it was vital that the bucket was
handled to the appropriate column. Once the bottom of the cup was open,
6,1 m3 of concrete were evacuated with a team of people who worked
along the mold. A total of 2,480,000 m3 of concrete were used in the barrier
before concrete pouring was halted on May 29, 1935. In addition, 850,000
m3 were used in the power plant and other works. More than 937 km of
cooling pipes were placed inside the concrete. In general, sufficient
concrete is incorporated in the dam to built a two-lane highway from San
Francisco to New York.

Concrete cores were removed from the dam to the test in 1995; they
showed that "concrete continued to slowly gain strength" and dam is
composed of a "concrete durable with a range of compressive strength
greater than those usually found in ordinary concrete. "The concrete in
Hoover Dam is not subject to alcalo-silicae reaction (ASR), as happened to
use non-reactive aggregates, as opposed to the downstream Dam Parker
Dam, where ASR has caused measurable damage.
In the second half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were
sufficientlyto allow large power generation, and the first three Francis
turbine generators, all from Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937 a
Nevada generator was switched on and the first generator was started in
Arizona in August. In September 1939 another four generators were
operable and plant electical dam has become the largest hydroelectric
facility in the world. Final generator was not put into use until 1961, bringing
maximum production capacity to 1345 MW at that time. Smaller generators
were used to serve smaller municipalities, each generator at first was
dedicated to one municipality before the overall strength of the dam has
been placed on the grid and the distribution was made arbitrary.
Before water from Lake Mead is to reach the turbine, it enters the intake
towers and brakes into four pipes that gradually narrows, which directs
water down to the electricity plant. Aspiration provides a maximum
hydraulic (pressure of water) of 180 m, as the water reaches a speed of
about 140 km / h. The whole flow of the Colorado River passes through the
turbines. Spillways and outlet works (gates jets flow), are underused. Jetflow gates, located in concrete structures located 55 m above the river and
at river level can be used to divert water around the dam under emergency
or flood, but they have not done so, and in practice are used onlyto drain
water from the penstocks maintenance. Following a draft upgrading the
capacity of 1986-1993, total gross power plant, including 22.4 MW 2 Pelton
turbine-generators that power their own operations, Hoover Dam has a
annual capacity of 2080 megawatts which varies. Maximum net generation
was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum was 2,648 TWh in 1956.
Medium is approximately 4.2 TWh / year.
Water control was the main concern in the building of the dam.
Generating energy allowed the dam project to stand alone, income from
saling energy reimbursing the loan on 50 years for construction, and these
revenues also funding annual budget of several million dollars
maintenance. Power is generated gradually releasing water only in

response to requests for water downstream. The water in Lake Mead

provides water for both irrigation and municipal use. Water discharged from
the Hoover Dam finally reach All-American Canal to irrigate over 400,000
hectares of land. The water in the lake serves 8 million people Arizona,
Nevada and California.
Record of 1,000,000 tourists was reached quite a long time now.
An important road passed right over Hoover Dam, so the number those is
growing from day to day. An alternative road was created recently after
attacks on 11 September 2001 shocked the country. Damage dam would
be a real catastrophe, so all the big cars are banned from passing over the
dam, and the smaller must undergo a rigorous control. Of course, the visit
and the landscape are indeed spectacullar, so detail similar to that of
control such at customs looked easy enough.
Bridge can be passed on foot, but not in the dark, and tour bookings can be
made simple, on the internet. Although Hoover Dam was exceeded much
on all levels,
tourists come in the same numbers and adds the vast construction at
"portfolio".