Construction and Monitoring for a State of the Art Foundation Grouting Program at Rough River Dam-PPT Presentation

PPT Presentation

Pdf Summary

The presentation describes Phase IB exploratory drilling and foundation grouting at Rough River Dam in Kentucky. The 130-foot-high earth-fill dam was built in the late 1950s on a foundation including Beech Creek Limestone, where karst features and variable geology posed potential seepage and stability concerns.<br /><br />The grouting program divided the foundation into zones according to bedrock conditions and required each zone to be isolated from the embankment before pressure grouting. Crews installed steel casing socketed into rock, multiple-port sleeve pipes, and geotextile barrier bags to separate and grout the casing annulus and soil-rock interface. Grouting proceeded in stages, with gravity grouting required before pressure grouting.<br /><br />New technologies supported construction control and verification. Instrumented packers measured pressure at the injection point, improving control under changing flow conditions and helping avoid false refusal. Real-time data management, downhole geophysics, and extensive instrumentation—including piezometers and vibrating-wire transducers—were used to monitor conditions, interpret subsurface features, and assess grouting.<br /><br />Phase IB work included 308 production holes and 20 verification holes, with 32,422 linear feet of overburden drilling, 7,477 feet of rock coring, and 26,058 feet of percussion rock drilling. Approximately 212,763 gallons of grout were injected. The presentation also compares foundation and embankment monitoring before and after grouting, but provides no specific quantitative performance conclusions in the supplied material.

Keywords

Rough River Dam

Phase IB

foundation grouting

exploratory drilling

earth-fill dam

karst geology

Beech Creek Limestone

seepage control

pressure grouting

instrumentation monitoring