About Tarbela Dam

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Tarbela Dam Construction Plaining & AweSomE Dam View's

Tarbela Dam (Urdu: تربیلا بند) on the Indus River in Pakistan is the second largest dam in the World by structural volume and the largest earth filled dam in the world. It is located in Haripur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) northwest of Islamabad.The dam is 485 feet (148 m) high above the riverbed. The dam forms the Tarbela Reservoir, with a surface area of approximately 250-square-kilometre (97 sq mi). The dam was completed in 1974 and was designed to store water from the Indus River for irrigation, flood control, and the generation of hydroelectric power.






The project is located at a narrow spot in the Indus River valley, at Tarbela in Haripur, shortly located at the point from where the District Swabi starts. Here the river formerly split around a large island close to the left bank. The main dam wall, built of earth and rock fill, stretches 2,743 metres (8,999 ft) from the island to river right, standing 148 metres (486 ft) high. A pair of concrete auxiliary dams spans the river from the island to river left. The spillways, located on the auxiliary dams, in turn consist of two parts. The main spillway has a discharge capacity of 18,406 cubic metres per second (650,000 cu ft/s) and the auxiliary spillway, 24,070 cubic metres per second (850,000 cu ft/s). The outlet works are a group of four tunnels that have been cut through the valley wall at river right, for uses of hydropower generation and flow control. These tunnels were originally used to divert the Indus River while the dam was being constructed. A hydroelectric power plant on the right side of the main dam houses 14 generators fed with water from outlet tunnels 1, 2, and 3.