Damage Simulation of High Arch Dams in Earthquakes

Abstract eng:
A numerical approach based on elastic damage mechanics is presented to simulate the crack evolution and damage mode of arch dams subjected to earthquake shocks. The initial inhomogeneity of concrete at the mesoscopic scale is idealized with stochastic distribution of material properties of finite elements. Each element in the dam is considered to be homogenous and obeys simple constitutive relations of brittle concrete materials. When the elements reach the assumed failure criteria-Mohr-Coulomb Principle with tension cut-off, its elastic modulus is reduced to a sufficiently small value. Based on domain decomposition method, the proposed approach is programmed to parallel finite element codes PDPAD with MPI (Message Passing Interface) in FORTRAN 9.0 on Linux Redhat 9.0. The verification of a to-be-built arch dam in China shows that cracks in concrete are caused mainly by excessive tensile stress. Cracks initiated at the top of the central cantilever and were distributed at the vicinity of the dam crest, with the rest of dam remained intact. Numerical simulation obtained similar results with shaking table test, indicating that the proposed procedure and corresponding parallel program PDPAD could efficiently simulate seismic damage mode of arch dams.

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