Seasonal Thermal Displacements of Gravity Dams Located in Northern Regions
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 23, Issue 3
Abstract
Seasonal temperature displacements are an important component of the total displacements recorded by pendulum measurements at gravity dams located in northern regions. A hybrid dam displacement model is presented in this paper to interpret these displacements and extrapolate the response for an extreme thermal event not yet experienced by the dam. The hybrid model uses a simplified deterministic structural dam representation with beam elements in complement to a hydrostatic seasonal time (HST) statistical displacement model. Comparisons are first established between 1D heat transfer analyses of typical gravity dam sections, and 2D finite-element (FE) analyses. Thermomechanical displacements are compared to show the validity of the proposed simplified deterministic beam model for typical dams. A case study of an actual gravity dam located in Quebec, Canada is then presented. It is shown that the deterministic model can be calibrated using the pendulum displacements and the HST model. The calibrated deterministic model is then used to extrapolate the displacement response for extreme thermal events not yet experienced by the dam. The proposed methodology represents a simple extension of the gravity method, widely used to verify gravity dam stability, as a first step to interpret recorded pendulum displacements and set appropriate warning and alarm levels on a rational basis before developing 2D and 3D thermomechanical FE deterministic dam models that require a lot of resources and expertise to be used effectively.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERCNSERC), the Quebec Funds for research on nature and technology (FQRNT), and the collaboration of Hydro-Quebec engineers who provided field data and the FE model used in this study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 23 • Issue 3 • June 2009
Pages: 166 - 174
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 4, 2007
Accepted: Jan 21, 2009
Published online: May 15, 2009
Published in print: Jun 2009
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