Radhanagari dam : The technical wonder work of Kolhapur.

We have bring new topic about the trick of automatic opening gates of dam. There is a dam named by ‘Radhangari’ or ‘Laxmi lake’ situated in Kolhapur district in India.

         This dam is specially known for the automatic opening gates which construction was initiated by CHH. Rajarshri Shahu Maharaj on 18 February 1907. The architecture of this automatic opening gates is M. K.  Visvesvaraya .  At first we should take a look at the Radhanagari Dam. The dam has height 42.68m which is 140ft & length 1143m which is 3750ft. Er. Pandurangrao Shinde was chief engineer & constructed under the supervising of Dajirao vichare whose name is given to small village as a appreciation by the Chh. Shahu Maharaj. Radhanagri dam is one of the gravity dam which mean by a dam constructed from concrete or stone masonry and designed to hold back water by primarily using the weight of the material alone to resist the horizontal pressure of water pushing against it. This is the oldest dam in Maharashtra state which construction is 100 years old. This dam is built on the river of Bhogavati.

         This dam has 7 automatic opening gates & 3 manually opening gates which can be opened by the using crane in emergency to decrease the water pressure. When dam get filled to 100% of its capacity, gate opens due to water pressure mechanism of this gates are as follows:  The mechanism of the dam is quite complicated as it is completely automatic dam. The mechanism of the dam works as follows:

There is some pressure parameters used in the dam based on the level of the water on the upstream side. 

Whenever the water level reaches up to a certain height (i.e. approx. flood level height measured from the previous year storms) the pressure is developed as per the sensitivity given to the pressure meters.

When the water level increases the maximum height up to which the dam can hold the pressure on the doors of the dam increases linearly. In other words, we can say that the water level and pressure meters used in the dam are kept proportional to each other.

When the water level increases up to the considered height the pressure meters reach their limit and the doors are opened automatically.

Similarly, it happens when the water level is lowered the pressure on the dam is lowered. In this way the doors of the dam can be closed automatically.

The pressure meters are located at the bottom of the dam and are connected to the doors. The doors are tied with cement blocks weighing up to 70 tons are always laying in the water. With the help of these blocks the doors return to their initial position.

         This dam is surrounded by the forest area. This dam is used for the irrigation & electricity generation by the technique of hydroelectricity. This dam has capacity of 8TMC to store the water. In year 1989,2005& 2019 emergency gate was opened rest of the times dam was fully controlled by automatic gates. So we can call this technique as old is still gold. This is dam like the diamond of the KOLHAPUR city.