Problematic

The most recent hydroelectric complex construction in the province of Québec is a complex composed of four plants on the Romaine River located on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence. Regional geologic particularities led Hydro-Québec to choose for the Romaine-2 dam, an embankment dam with an asphaltic concrete core. As this type of embankment dam was a first in North America, field trial test were carried out to adapt the construction methods and also to train the equipment operators and the quality control personnal. The Romaine-2 project was designed on the basis of the knowledge acquired during the field tests trial. The field tests data and the unprecedented quality control program implemented for the project represent a tremendous dataset that can be use to link measured material properties to their thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour.

The main challenge for this project will be to organized the data and to develop powerful data analysis methods. The second great challenge will be to determine a global picture of the Romaine-2 construction conditions, synthetizing the data under a geostatistical approach and integrating the georeferenced data acquired by the instrumented compaction equipment.

Subprojects:

-Analyzing the data from the field trial tests  (MSC12)

-Compiling and analyzing  the data from the instrumented compactors (MSc13)

-Developing of a geostatistical model for the Romaine-2 dam (MSC14)

-Establishing a global picture of the Romaine-2 dam construction conditions (Postdoc1)