Experience in construction methods as adopted in compacted concrete dams in the Ebro catchment area (Rialb, Val and Urdalur dams)

Since Roller Compacted Concrete, hereinafter RCC, came into Spain in the eighties, this dam construction technique has evolved until becoming a competitive solution in comparison with the use of conventional concrete, thanks to its on-site placing speed, the concrete’s workability and lower cost.

This technique was used in the Ebro Hydrological Confederation (Spain) for the first time in 1992 in the Urdalur dam (Navarre) and, later, in the Val (Zaragoza-1997) and Rialb (Lleida-2000) dams, and this paper’s aim is to analyse the peculiarities of the construction methods used in each one.