DEFORMATION OF GRAVITY DAM AND FOUNDATION -AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON RUBBER MODELS

Abstract

An attempt has been made to determine the deformation and stresses in the dam and foundations by the use of hard India-rubber models. The model technique was indigenously deve-loped. In absence of sophisticated measuring instruments, help was taken of the available apparatus in the Centre for decipher-ing the deformations. The results show fair agreement with the actual physical behaviour of the dam and give results which are quite near to the analytical results. This method has wide pros-pects for application in future studies. A comprehensive review of the work done in finding and recording deformation in the model and prototype, is given. The evaluation of stresses from deformation data by different methods has been discussed. Studies were done to determine deformations and stresses in the dam and the foundation for homogeneous and faulty half plane. The results show some trends quite different from the normal classical theory of gravity analysis. The experimental results have been compared with the gravity and finite element method calculations.