In 1967, H.M. Hassan II king of Morocco launched his program to bring better water managing facilities to his country. More than 100 dams had arisen across the country before the 21st century, mainly with the objective to enhance the agriculture sector. In reaction to the global warming and intense droughts suffered by the country, the actual king H.M. Mohammed VI launched in the late 2010’s a new program with 30 new dams with mainly earth-filled type.

From 2020, Sisgeo supplied geotechnical instruments for 5 great earth-filled dams in diverse regions of Morocco: Ghiss (Al Hoceima), Targa ou Madi (Guercif), Kheng Grou (Figuig), Beni Azimane (Driouech) and M’Dez (Sefrou). Our client Sixense Maroc is performing the installation of these instruments within the construction activities managed by SBTX  and SGTM.

Earth-filled dams with a concrete upstream screen are typical structures among hydropower facilities. The struct ures have been designed in a common way for the instrumentation part: many VW-Piezometers, for monitoring the pore water pressures and the saturation levels within the dam body; D232 horizontal embankment chain extensometers have been used for monitoring the horizontal extension within the dam structure; RTD temperature probes are installed for following the internal temperatures of the earth mass. The monitoring of the concrete upstream screen involves a large number of submerged 1D and 3D crackmeters for monitoring the long-term behavior of concrete joints.In addition, Borehole Extensometers MPBX have been installed for monitoring the vertical movements between the dam body and the foundations.

To date have been supplied: 40 x RTD, 7 x CRD-400 readouts, 75 1D-jointmeters, 20 3D-jointmeters, 82 piezometers, 6 MPBX, 2 inverted and direct pendulums, 1000m of chain of embankment extensometers, 45m of staff gauges.

Thanks to Sixense Maroc for your continuous collaboration on this project, which is still ongoing in the current year.