Evaluation of Powerhouse Cavern for the SachKhas Hydroelectric Project in Himachal, India

Abstract

Evaluation of an underground powerhouse cavern's stability is a challenging task and needs to be carried out carefully by taking care of its location, orientation and dimensioning. This article deals with the stability evaluation of a large underground powerhouse cavern, which is located at the toe of the valley side slope where the depth varies between 59m (minimum) and 70m (maximum). The planned powerhouse cavern has a dimension consisting 130m length, 23m wide and 48 m high. The manuscript evaluates the extent of pre-construction phase engineering geological investigations of the project, discusses on the selection of input parameters and carries out assessment on the displacement conditions at the cavern and also assesses the extent of yielded zone at the toe slope. Finally, recommendations are suggested on the location and orientation of the powerhouse cavern, uncertainties involved in numerical analysis and boundary conditions for 2D and 3D models under gravitational field stress.

A practical tool for the stability estimation of underground quarries in North France

“…Numerical modelling for the stability analysis of mines and underground quarries has been widely used (Martin and Maybee, 2000;Canbulat et al, 2002Canbulat et al, , 2000Castellanza et al, 2010;Ferrero et al, 2010;Ferrero and Segalini, 2011) . More recently, works on the stability analyses of quarries using numerical methods have been presented by Oggeri and Oresti (2015), Rathore (2016), Arslan (2017) and Malli et al (2017). Nevertheless, no particular work has addressed directly the jointed chalk quarries of North France.…”