Black & Veatch Wins Prize for Technical Paper
Professionals from Black & Veatch, a global engineering, consulting, and construction company, have been awarded the Overseas Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), London, for a technical paper, entitled, "Lin Au Culvert, Hong Kong: taming the torrent," according to a Sept. 2 press release.
The paper, co-authored by Bruce Corney, David Meigh, and Michael Hieatt, describes the innovative and sustainable solutions that helped to address the challenging design and construction of the Lin Au concrete-arch culvert, part of the award-winning Tai Po water treatment works (WTW) in Hong Kong.
The 500-meters (m)-long, 8-m-wide concrete-arch culvert is buried up to 25 m beneath the works. The structural integrity of the culvert was vital to support the base of the new treatment works and to protect the works from being washed out by up to 60 megawatts of hydraulic energy derived from the 75-m drop in river levels over the site.
Corney, senior resident engineer for the firm at Tai Po WTW, commented: "Black & Veatch undertook a fresh approach at design concept, adopting a single barrel-arch culvert solution. This provided hydraulic benefits in passing larger flows, 'stilling' the total flow in a sequence of stilling basins, and allowing ease of inspection while in operation. Additionally, to preserve resources, the designs made as much use as possible of rock derived from excavations on site."
For the past seven years, the culvert has successfully contained and dissipated high-speed, boulder-laden storm flows of up to 80 meters per cubic second.