NEAR AND FAR FAULT GROUND MOTION EFFECT ON CONCRETE GRAVITY DAM

Abstract

This thesis tends to investigate the effect of near fault and far fault ground motions on concrete gravity dam. Forward directivity and long duration high energy velocity pulse, causes response of the dam under near fault earthquake to be significantly different in comparison to the far fault earthquake. A linear time history analysis is carried out an ABAQUS software for an arbitrary dam using the concept of finite element, which is based on the cumulative inelastic duration of the stress history produced by performing a linear time history analysis of the model concrete gravity dam. The acceptance levels of DCR are examined by the performance exhibited by the concrete gravity dam during the dynamic analysis. For the above analysis, total of 16 earthquakes of both near and far fault categories are selected and applied on full reservoir condition. The result of the analysis indicates that near fault ground motions which significantly effects the response of dam-reservoir-foundation system, causes more damage to the dam in comparison to far fault ground motion.