Beas Dam makes its own Conveyor Devices for Mass Scale Concrete Placement

The concreting of massive spillway of 129.5 m. (425 ft.) high earth and rochfill Beas Dam, has always posed as a baffling problem for the construction engineers of the Project not because of the magnitude of concrete, but because of its configuration & location which follows more or less the topography of the hill terrain. The spillway is designed to carry 12,374 cumecs [4,37,000 cusecs) of excess water during the floods and involves 4,60,000 cu. m. of concrete in its construction. Various proposals have remained under consideration for its concreting & the most economical was based on the use of imported ‘Belt-crete’ units. This article deals with various aspects of the job and how the conveyor type devices have been engineered & developed locally by the authors for executing the work still more economically with better progress & with fewer hands, resulting in a big saving not only in foreign exchange otherwise needed for the imported units but also in chargeable costs of concrete placement as compared to any other method.