Hydraulic Formwork Design
Within the Shannon Creek dam inundation zone, an intake tower was constructed, consisting of a concrete base excavated into rock 10m in depth, and a concrete stem and platform 41m in height. The purpose of the tower is to allow water to flow into and out of the storage area, for potable supply or to enable environmental flow of the creek further downstream.
The requirement to take water from a number different levels of the water storage was enabled by the manipulation of large steel baulks that are lowered up and down the tower shafts by the use of an overhead crane.
Two non-symmetrical shafts reside in the stem of the tower. To construct the stem, two internal steel forms were specially fabricated using designs by Mark Johns of MJ Civil. These were made so that they would collapse inwards by the use of hydraulic arms. This would minimise the amount of man-hours inside the shaft, which has the safety benefit of risk mitigation for operative during construction as well as providing a commercially viable method of construction.
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