ABSTRACT
The Tucuruí hydroelectric power station is located on the Tocantins river, upstream from the town of Tucuruí, and 300 km from Belém, capital city of Pará State, in the North area of Brazil, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The main aim of the project is power generation. The work was planned to be built in two stages. The first construction stage of the dam was finished in December 1992, with twelve units of 350 MW and two additional units of 22.5 MW, making the total installed capacity of 4245 MW. The second stage, began in June 1998, it consists of eleven more 375 MW generation units with the addition of 4125 MW of capacity. When finished off in 2006, the power plant will have a total installed capacity of 8370 MW, making it one of the largest hydroelectric of the world. Up to February 2003, the total volume of concrete placement in the two construction stages is about 7,970,000 m3. Part of the concrete volume was the Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC), applied in the structures of the Water Intakes and Shiplock and controlled according to the knowledge and the technology developed at that time of each construction stage. The paper presents the quality control carried out in each stage, being made an identification of structures where the RCC was applied. Soon afterwards, the control is approached as it was practiced in the field, it comprises the Production Control, Placement Control and Technological Control. The Concrete Production Control, the explanation is set out to the tests of moisture of aggregates and concrete, workability and specific gravity of the concrete, with emphasis on the last one, in the relative description to the second construction stage. The Concrete Placement Control to point out the cares adopted in the RCC mix proportions, construction joints, thickness lift, compaction of the RCC along its interface with the conventional concrete facing, the determination of the compaction ratio and, curing and weather protection of the lift joint. The Technological Control with the tests results of compressive and tensile strength as well as, some permeability tests are presented and analyzed. After the account of the quality control carried out in the two construction stages, are made the comments point to the differences and the relevant points among them. Finally, some conclusions are drawn regarding the obtained results.
