In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

Actually, the only guage I have for thickness is the claim you made that the
structure was around twice as thick at the mid-point as the Rhine dams
mentioned. Plus knowing the height of the structure, it is easy to surmise
that the base dimensions have to be pretty darned big themselves to resist
the massive moment resulting from the hydrostatic load. Of course, we could
get a SWAG by taking the volume of concrete (known), the height of the
structure, and then figuring the likely bottom "thickness" (as I believe you
have called it)...let's see, 26 million cm with a max height of 185 meters
and a length of about 2300 meters, gives us a likely bottom measurement in
the area of about 122 meters, assumeing a uniformly decreasing cross
section as you go up (yeah, I know that is probably not the case, but it
will be close enough, and I have yet to see anything that actually provides
the cross sectional dimensions of the dam as built).

You assumed the dam, as built, is one big structure of a certain
cross-section, that the amount of concrete used on the dam *project* is
the same as that just used on the dam (as opposed to the other dam
structures, locks, roads, powerhouses), et cetera.

Overall, you've overestimated the volume of concrete used in the dam
itself by at *least* a factor of two.

That throws all of your other guesswork right out the window.

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