Piped water cooling of concrete dams

Abstract

Piped water is used to remove hydration heat from concrete dams during construction. By examining simple models we obtain an estimate for the temperature rise along the pipe network and within the concrete. To leading order, for practically useful networks, the temperature distribution is quasi-steady, so that exact analytic solutions are obtained. The temperature in the water increases linearly with distance along the pipe and varies logarithmically with radial distance from the pipe in the concrete. Using these results we obtained estimates for the optimal spacing of pipes and pipe length. Some preliminary work on optimal network design has been done. This is work in progress.