Seismic Fragility of Concrete Gravity Dams with Spatial Variation of Angle of Friction: Case Study
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 5
Abstract
Concrete gravity dams are essential infrastructure components and because of earlier design practices, they may be vulnerable to future earthquake events. Therefore, their vulnerability is important to characterize, particularly given the large societal consequences of dam failure. Seismic fragility curves allow a rational safety and vulnerability assessment of existing structures under earthquake hazards offering statements of the conditional probability of reaching a limit state. This paper evaluates the seismic fragility of a case study concrete dam located in northeastern Quebec, improving on existing approaches by including spatial variation of the angle of friction and offering insights regarding the significance of modeling parameters, importance of spatial variation, and overall vulnerability of the dam to two failure modes. Finite-element techniques are used to model the dam system and to fully account for dam-reservoir-foundation interactions. Uncertainties in the ground motions and modeling parameters are included and propagated using a sampling technique. The fragility curves are developed using nonlinear time-history analysis, and the uncertainty related to the spatial variation of the angle of friction is included in the fragility analysis through the incorporation of random fields modeling. The study reveals that this additional source of uncertainty has a slight effect on the fragility of the dam and is mainly critical when severe damage levels are considered.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Fonds de recherche du Quebec-Nature et technologies (FRQNT) and Hydro-Quebec. Computational resources were provided by Compute Canada and Calcul Quebec. The authors also thank Douglas Sparks, Martin Roberge, and Benjamin Miquel, all of Hydro-Quebec, for their cooperation during this research project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.
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Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 5 • May 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 25, 2014
Accepted: Sep 18, 2015
Published online: Dec 16, 2015
Published in print: May 1, 2016
Discussion open until: May 16, 2016
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