Seismic testing of a scaled roller-compacted-concrete gravity dam

2016
Gharibdoust, Ali
Within the last half-century, seismic response analysis of concrete gravity dams has been extensively studied. Studies reveal that two types of failure modes prevail in the form of dam body cracking or base slide. The literature lacks the conditions that clearly differentiate the two failure types. In this context a state of the art single degree of freedom pseudo-dynamic testing was developed to assess the gravity dam response on smooth foundation interface. Three different hazard levels of earthquake namely, Operational base earthquake (OBE), Maximum design earthquake (MDE) and Maximum characteristic earthquake (MCE) were employed during the course of the study. Subsequently a pushover test was performed to identify the reserve capacity of the scaled dam and its failure mode. The test results demonstrated the tendency of the scaled dam specimen to slide during MCE ground motion and eventually fail due to the rigid body sliding during the pushover test. A comparison was made between tip displacement and base slip acquired from the test and those values obtained from sliding analysis developed by Chopra and Zhang (1991b). Results were found to be in agreement and confirmed the approach by Chopra and Zhang (1991b). Finally thevi results were compared with the results from a companion specimen tested by Aldemir et al. (2015), which had a rough dam-foundation interface. It was found that base roughness is detrimental in defining the final failure mode of dams. 

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Citation Formats
A. Gharibdoust, “Seismic testing of a scaled roller-compacted-concrete gravity dam,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2016.