Preparation of High-specification Sand at the Grand Coulee Dam

THE definite trend to stricter specifications with respect to hydraulic concrete has become increasingly manifest in the last six years or so; but it remained for the vast reclamation projects of the Bureau of Recla-mation of the Department of the Interior of the last few years to focus attention on this trend, and to demonstrate how thousands of tons of concrete-making aggregates can be produced continuously and auto-matically with a control of fineness comparable with that obtained with small samples in well equipped private and governmental laboratories. Pioneer work in this direction was done, to be sure, by private com-panies, notably the Kaiser Paving Co. of San Francisco, prior to the present vast public works program. Then in 1931 came the first great aggregates-preparation plant of the Six Companies, Inc. to supply. construction materials for Boulder Dam' in Nevada, and now, in 1936, the aggregates plant of the Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier Co., general con¬tractors on the Grand Coulee dam in Washington. At Boulder dam and to an even greater degree at Grand Coulee dam, sand production is recognized as probably the most important single element affecting the physical characteristics of the concrete. For in the construction of dams accurate grading of the fine aggregate has consider-able bearing on the attainment of a uniform and homogeneous concrete of a high degree of workability and placeability and, at the same time, combining high density and low cement content. Low cement content is of value not only from the standpoint of economy but also because the use of an unnecessarily rich concrete causes certain undesirable characteristics to develop. This paper will relate how at Grand Coulee dam methods that are more advanced than ever before are producing four sizes of gravel and a sand having a fineness modulus of 2.5-3.0. The design capacity is 1000 tons an hour. Significantly, the methods and equipment employed are broadly those that have been used for a generation in metallurgical mills for accurately sizing and grading both precious