The city center area of Qurum, a suburb of Muscat, is experiencing a growing number of flash floods. A cyclone recently hit the area claiming 50 lives and causing USD 3.9 billion in damage. To protect the area, Oman’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries Wealth, and Water Resources initiated a flood protection plan consisting of six dams, with ARQ and Partners providing technical support for the Jufainah B6 dam. However, the proposed location was along a geological fault zone, requiring them to undertake sophisticated geotechnical analysis and minimize the negative impacts of the various foundation properties.
ARQ and Partners used PLAXIS 3D to undertake geotechnical stability and deformation analysis to examine numerous preliminary designs and determine their suitability. Their analysis helped the design teams choose and refine the optimal design, greatly reducing the amount of stress placed on the dam’s plastic concrete core while lowering costs by 30% and construction time by two months. With a stable design, the dam will help protect the 700,000 people of Qurum and 120,000 people in Al Amerat from 500-year floods while improving the local aquifer and enhancing local agriculture.