LUIS VALENZUELA P, RAMON VERDUGO A, JOSE CAMPANA Z & CARMEN G OPAZO A
1. Introduction
Chile is characterized as a narrow strip of land between the Andes Mountains in the East and the Pacific Coast in the West, with an average width of about 200km and around 4000km long. The Northern regions of the country are desertic with quite low precipitation, while the Southern regions have relatively high precipitation. The Central regions show mild climate and moderate annual precipitation. Most of the mining activity is in the North and Central regions; agriculture and hydroelectricity are mainly located in the Central and Southern regions. The highly seismic environment and special geography represent quite extreme conditions for dam safety, and Chilean engineering has faced major challenges with a long learning process in order to improve design, construction, operation and maintenance of dams; a challenge always present with relatively frequent strong earthquakes, and dams with increasing heights like those built over the last three decades. A register of Chilean dams constructed up until 1996, and the characteristics of the most representative dams, are presented in a publication by ICOLD Chile[1]. This publication, which includes different types of dams, also presents a condensed history of Chilean dams[2]. During the Inca empire in the XVI century, agriculture required intensive irrigation in most parts of the country and many canals were built mainly after the Spanish conquered the country in the XVI century, but no register of dams is available for the period before the middle of the XIX century. Some of the old non-registered tailing deposits are still visible in the desertic Northern region of the country.
Since the middle of the XIX century, until approximately 1928, most of the dams constructed were the result of private initiatives with little participation and supervision from authorities or government institutions. After 1928 government organizations started to play a more significant role in the design and construction of water retaining dams, both for irrigation and water supply and hydroelectric generation, but tailings dams continued to be built under private initiatives.
In the 1950s and 1960s, due to the growth of the world’s economy, the country started constructing larger water dams for irrigation and hydroelectricity, as well as larger tailings dams. Also, during this period an important development in seismology and earthquake engineering was initiated, allowing for much better seismic design of dams. Figure 1 shows the development of water reservoir capacity during the last 100 years, as reported by the Ministry of Public Works[3], and updated in 2020. The total water reservoir capacity in 2020 is in the order of 4500Mm3.
During those years the development of local guidelines and legislation dedicated to dam design have been relatively minor, and most of the designs relied on international experience and international standards, although in the last 50 years Chilean dam engineering has gradually taken a significant and more distinctive international role in the seismic design of dams, supported by the experience obtained from important dams of different types that have been subjected to strong earthquakes.
186 DAM ENGINEERING
Vol XXXI Issue 3
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