Seismic Water Pressure in Cracked Concrete Gravity Dams: Experimental Study and Theoretical Modeling
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 131, Issue 1
Abstract
Water pressure variations along concrete cracks with moving walls are investigated experimentally and theoretically. Displacement control tests were conducted to measure water pressure on long concrete cracks during harmonic motion of crack walls. The effects of key parameters including frequency of excitation, minimum and amplitude of crack mouth opening displacement, and initial static uplift pressure on the magnitude of developed pressure is also studied. The experimental results show the possibility of cavitation in a new or existing crack opening mode. A theoretical dynamic water–crack interaction model is developed, considering the effect of cavitation phenomenon, to compute water pressure in cracks as a function of crack wall motion history, crack length, crack roughness, and crack mouth pressure. The validity of the developed method is verified by the test results and it is used to study the pressure variations in longer cracks likely to develop in the concrete gravity dams. The computed uplift pressures indicate that, in an opening seismic crack, water pressure develops near the crack mouth and there is no water pressure along the rest of crack. A simplified method is developed to estimate the dynamic uplift force and resultant position in crack opening mode to use in seismic dam stability evaluation using pseudostatic or pseudodynamic procedure.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank Mr. Martin Leclerc, Research Engineering at École Polytechnique, who provided very valuable help to perform the laboratory experiments and postprocessing of the related results. The writers also gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Hydro-Québec and Alcan. In addition, the first writer would like to acknowledge a scholarship from Ministry of Science Research and Technology of Iran and Urmia University.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 131 • Issue 1 • January 2005
Pages: 139 - 150
Copyright
© 2004 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 16, 2003
Accepted: Mar 16, 2004
Published online: Jan 1, 2005
Published in print: Jan 2005
Notes
Note. Associate Editor: Vinay Kumar Gupta
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