Published Resources Details
Conference Paper
- Title
- Design Influences from France - George Gordon and the Lower Stony Creek Dam, Geelong
- In
- Engineering Heritage Matters: Conference Papers of the 12th National Conference on Engineering Heritage, Toowoomba, 29 September to 1 October 2003
- Imprint
- Engineers Australia, Barton, Australian Capital Territory, 2003, pp. 79-90
- ISBN/ISSN
- 064642775X
- Url
- https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.335314246186453
- Abstract
This paper looks at the background of George Gordon, the experienced hydraulic engineer recruited to Victoria in 1873. Gordon immediately designed the concrete gravity dam built on the Stony Creek for the Geelong water supply in 1873-74. Standard British practice at the time was to build embankment dams, and all the dams built up to that time in Victoria followed this practice, so the use of a masonry structure represented a significant innovation. The paper covers the conditions in Victoria that brought about Gordon's appointment, the state of knowledge at the time on masonry dam design, Gordon's experience in Europe and India, and how his interest in masonry dams, and in the French analytical techniques for design of such dams, developed when he worked there on dam design, and was strengthened by a visit to the Furens dam while on route to Victoria. Gordon applied the recently developed French method of 'equal pressures' to his design, but modified it by adhering to the criterion, ignored by the French engineers, that there should be no vertical tension at the face of the dam, thus producing the first masonry gravity dam designed in accordance with sound stability principles.
Related Published resources
isPartOf
- Engineering Heritage Matters: Conference Papers of the 12th National Conference on Engineering Heritage, Toowoomba, 29 Sept to 1 Oct 2003 edited by Sheridan, Norman (Barton, Australian Capital Territory: Engineers Australia, 2003), 183 pp, https://search.informit.org/doi/book/10.3316/informit.064642775X. Details