Monitoramento na galeria da barragem da UHE Salto Caxias

Abstract

The importance of dams for mankind goes back to the early days when there was a lack of water in times of drought and thus the need for storage in times of flooding increased. Over time, the construction methods of dams have been improved, reaching larger volumes of dams and, on the other hand, increasing the risks in case of rupture. Thus, due to its importance and magnitude, the monitoring of these structures becomes essential so that the health and stability of the dam are not altered and, consequently, disasters occur with loss of human lives and destruction of an entire ecosystem, as in recent cases in Brazil. In order to evaluate the displacement of the dam under study, two types of monitoring were carried out in two measurement campaigns, being the relative monitoring for opening cracks in the dam body with the aid of tri-axial joint gauges already present on site, and the absolute monitoring from the polygonal method, performing the walk inside the dam's inspection gallery, generating a global analysis of the structure. Both in relative and absolute monitoring, a minimum displacement in the structure was attested, which could be confused with a measurement or calibration error in the device, since for the relative monitoring a maximum displacement of 0.12 mm was observed within 6 months, a small difference compared to the recommended time of measurement every 15 days. As for the absolute monitoring, the maximum displacement found was 2.00 mm and the average displacement of the points measured was 0 mm for direction X and 1.00 mm for direction Y, attesting to the stability of the structure since the maximum tolerance recommended for such structures are 10 and 15 mm respectively.