DYNAMIC . ANALYSIS OF NON-OVERFLOW SECTION OF A CONCRETE GRAVITY DAM

Abstract

The seismic safety of a dam has j~e always been the cause of a~ Concern to the dam designers, The prevalent practice of the Sei.src design of a gravity dam is based on pseudo-static methods which have serious deficiencies with respect to the magnitude of stresses, their nature as well as the distribution in the dam body. Because these methods ignore the dynamic nature of the problem, they fail to anticipate the large tensile stresses that may develop in typical gravity dams due to earthquakes, to recognize the detrimental effects of a heavy mass near the dam crest and to identify the most critically stressed regions of the dams. An attempt has been made in this dissertation to present a simplified dynamic analysis procedure for the seismic analysis of concrete gravity dams. The procedure considers the earthquake response characteristics of the dam-water system and the properties of earthquake ground motion. Also, a. computer program for the analysis of concrete gravity dams including the dynamic analysis procedure has been developed.The procedure has been illustrated by applying the method to a typical non-overflow section of a concrete gravity dam. A comparative evaluation with respect to the conventional procedure has also been made.