Grout Report and Control System

Overview

Vektrex designed and developed a multi-operator Grout Report and Control (GRC) system to assist the California Metropolitan Water District during construction of the Eastside Reservoir near Hemet, California

During construction of a reservoir, engineers must seal cracks that can appear in the bedrock beneath the dam. This process, called grouting, requires engineers to drill holes into the bedrock, to depths sometimes reaching a few hundred feet, and then pump pressurized cement grout into the holes to fill the cracks in the bedrock. The Eastside Reservoir required hundreds of thousands of holes to be drilled and grouted beneath three dams.

During grouting, two flow sensors, a pressure sensor and a density sensor, monitor each hole. The data is transmitted back to the Grout Control Office and saved in the Grout Database. Operators monitor the progress and authorize the contractors to proceed with each step in the grouting process.

Expertise Used

Vektrex designed and developed the GRC system using National Instruments LabVIEW software.

Additional Information

A Vektrex software engineer preparing for work.

The GRC system has three main components:

• The Serial Workstation receives data from the remote sensors, calibrates the data, transfers the data to the Server, and displays a communication status for each of the sensors.

• The Server stores the sensor data, supplies the data to the Operator Workstations, and prints reports.

• Multiple Operator Workstations display the sensor data in numerical and graphical format. The operators enter comments and progress information for each hole.

Top Level Operator Workstation Screen

The Operator Workstation main screen displays four graphs, which plot real-time sensor information from a selected hole. Beneath the graphs, is a historical list of operator entries and comments for different stages of drilling and grouting.

To the right of the graphs, is a pull down menu to select standard entries and comments. Beneath the pull down menu is a list of active holes and hole status indicators for this particular workstation. Up to eight holes can be active on a single operator workstation.