Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Braddock Locks and Dam

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Opening date
  
1906

Opened
  
May 2004

Impounds
  
Monongahela River

Construction began
  
1902

Braddock Locks & Dam wwwlrpusacearmymilportals72siteimagesNavig

Location
  
Operator
  
United States Army Corps of Engineers

Similar
  
Monongahela River, Elizabeth Locks & Dam, Charleroi Locks & Dam, Maxwell Lock & Dam, Allegheny River Lock and Dam

Locking through braddock locks dam


Braddock Locks & Dam (previously named Monongahela Locks and Dam No. 2) is one of nine navigational structures on the Monongahela River between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Fairmont, West Virginia. Built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the gated dam and the lock form an upstream pool that is for 12.6 miles (20.3 km), stretching to Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.

Contents

Map of Braddock Locks %26 Dam, North Braddock, PA 15122, USA

Description of Project Features

Braddock Locks and Dam consists of the locks located on the right bank and the newly gated dam, that replaced the nearly 100-year-old fixed-crest dam.

Locks

The locks, built in 1953, consist of two chambers, side-by-side. The land chamber is 110 feet (34 m) wide by 720 feet (220 m) long and the river chamber is 56 feet (17 m) wide by 360 feet (110 m) long.

New Dam

Construction of new Braddock Dam, started in 1999, was completed in May 2004 using innovative in-the-wet construction techniques. Two prefabricated hollow concrete segments were constructed at an off-site dry-dock and floated into place and set down on a prefabricated foundation system of sheet-pile cut-off walls and large diameter drilled shafts socketed into bedrock. The float-in segments were built with precast wall panels and cast-in-place bottom and top slabs. Weight of the first 333-foot (101 m) by 104-foot (32 m) segment was 11,600 short tons (10,500 tonnes). Dam segment two, at 9,000 short tons (8,200 tonnes), measures 265 feet (81 m) by 104 feet (32 m).

The 517-foot-wide (158 m) spillway was equipped with three 110-foot-wide (34 m) by 21-foot-high (6.4 m) Standard Tainter gates and one 110-foot-wide (34 m) by 11-foot-high (3.4 m) Water Quality Tainter gate. Each gate is operated by two hydraulic cylinders. All gates were fabricated and assembled in one piece by G&G in Alabama and were barge shipped to the project site. Weight of the Standard Gate and the Water Quality Gate is 438 kips and 286 kips, respectively.

The construction cost of the new dam was approximately $107.4 million.

References

Braddock Locks & Dam Wikipedia