Mechanism of Cracking in Dams Using a Hybrid FE-Meshfree Method
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 17, Issue 9
Abstract
Cracking has a significant impact on dam safety. A discontinuous hybrid finite-element meshfree (FE-meshfree) method, which inherits advantages from both the FEM and the meshfree method, was developed to investigate the mechanism of cracking in concrete dams. In this paper, first, the performance of the hybrid FE-meshfree method was validated by comparing it to existing experimental and numerical results of a scaled physical dam model without hydraulic pressure. Then, the mechanism of single- and multiple-crack propagations with hydraulic pressure was investigated numerically. It was found that all cracks propagate toward the toes of the structures in the downstream side. The influence of hydraulic pressure seems to become weaker from the top to the bottom of a dam.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant 2015CB058100); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51579194); and program of the research and application about project construction and safe operation of long-distance water transfer subordinated to the major specific foundation, Effective Development and Utilization of Water Resources (Grant 2016YFC0401803).
References
Babuška, I., and Melenk, J. M. (1997). “The partition of unity method.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 40(4), 727–758.
Belytschko, T., Krongauz, Y., Organ, D., Fleming, M., and Krysl, P. (1996). “Meshless methods: An overview and recent developments.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 139(1–4), 3–47.
Belytschko, T., Lu, Y. Y., and Gu, L. (1994). “Element-free Galerkin methods.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 37(2), 229–256.
Carpinteri, A., Valente, S., Ferrara, G., and Imperato, L. (1992). “Experimental and numerical fracture modeling of a gravity dam.” Fracture mechanics of concrete structures, Z. P. Bazant, ed., CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 351–360.
Duarte, C. A., Hamzeh, O. N., Liszka, T. J., and Tworzydlo, W. W. (1999). “The element partition method for three-dimensional dynamic crack propagation.” 5th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics, U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics, Austin, TX, 297.
Duarte, C. A., Hamzeh, O. N., Liszka, T. J., and Tworzydlo, W. W. (2001). “A generalized finite element method for the simulation of three dimensional dynamic crack propagation.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 190(15), 2227–2262.
Garzon, J., O’Hara, P., Duarte, C. A., and Buttlar, W. G. (2014). “Improvements of explicit crack surface representation and update within the generalized finite element method with application to three dimensional crack coalescence.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 97(4), 231–273.
Ishida, T. (2001). “Acoustic emission monitoring of hydraulic fracturing in laboratory and field.” Constr. Build. Mater., 15(5-6), 283–295.
Kolk, K., Weber, W., and Kuhn, G. (2005). “Investigation of 3D crack propagation problems via fast BEM formulations.” Comput. Mech., 37(1), 32–40.
Kraus, M., Rajagopal, A., and Steinmann, P. (2013). “Investigations on the polygonal finite element method: Constrained adaptive Delaunay tessellation and conformal interpolants.” Comput. Struct., 120, 33–46.
Lancaster, P., and Salkauskas, K. (1986). Curve and surface fitting: An introduction, Academic, London.
Liu, G. R., Zhang, G. Y., Gu, Y. T., and Wang, Y. (2005). “A meshfree radial point interpolation method (RPIM) for three-dimensional solids.” Comput. Mech., 36(6), 421–430.
Lo, K. Y., and Kaniaru, K. (1990). “Hydraulic fracture in earth and rock-fill dams.” Can. Geotech. J., 27(4), 496–506.
Lu, C., et al. (2015). “Engineering geological characteristics and the hydraulic fracture propagation mechanism of the sand-shale interbedded formation in the Xu5 reservoir.” J. Geophys. Eng., 12(3), 321–339.
Manzini, G., Russo, A., and Sukumar, N. (2014). “New perspectives on polygonal and polyhedral finite element methods.” Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci., 24(8), 1665–1699.
Melenk, J. M., and Babuška, I. (1996). “The partition of unity finite element method: Basic theory and applications.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 139(1-4), 289–314.
Mi, Y., and Aliabadi, M. H. (1994). “Three-dimensional crack growth simulation using BEM.” Comput. Struct., 52(5), 871–878.
Moayed, R. Z., Izadi, E., and Fzalavi, M. (2012). “In-situ stress measurements by hydraulic fracturing method at Gotvand Dam site, Iran.” Turk. J. Eng. Environ. Sci., 36(3), 179–194.
Moës, N., Dolbow, J., and Belytschko, T. (1999). “A finite element method for crack growth without remeshing.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 46(1), 131–150.
Mukhopadhyay, N. K., Maiti, S. K., and Kakodkar, A. (2000). “A review of SIF evaluation and modelling of singularities in BEM.” Comput. Mech., 25(4), 358–375.
Natarajan, S., Ooi, E. T., Chiong, I., and Song, C. (2014). “Convergence and accuracy of displacement based finite element formulations over arbitrary polygons: Laplace interpolants, strain smoothing and scaled boundary polygon formulation.” Finite Elem. Anal. Des., 85, 101–122.
Paluszny, A., Tang, X. H., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2013). “Fracture and impulse based finite-discrete element modeling of fragmentation.” Comput. Mech., 52(5), 1071–1084.
Paluszny, A., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2013). “Numerical fracture growth modeling using smooth surface geometric deformation.” Eng. Fract. Mech., 108, 19–36.
Pereira, J. P., Duarte, C. A., Guoy, D., and Jiao, X. (2009). “hp-generalized FEM and crack surface representation for non-planar 3-D cracks.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 77(5), 601–633.
Pereira, J. P., Duarte, C. A., and Jiao, X. (2010). “Three-dimensional crack growth with hp-generalized finite element and face offsetting methods.” Comput. Mech., 46(3), 431–453.
Rabczuk, T., and Belytschko, T. (2004). “Cracking particles: A simplified meshfree method for arbitrary evolving cracks.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 61(13), 2316–2343.
Rabczuk, T., Bordas, S., and Zi, G. (2007). “A three-dimensional meshfree method for continuous multiple-crack initiation, propagation and junction in statics and dynamics.” Comput. Mech., 40(3), 473–495.
Rahman, M. M. and Rahman, S. S. (2013). “Fully coupled finite-element–based numerical model for investigation of interaction between an induced and a preexisting fracture in naturally fractured poroelastic reservoirs: Fracture diversion, arrest, and breakout.” Int. J. Geomech., 390–401.
Rajendran, S., and Zhang, B. R. (2007). “A ‘FE-meshfree’ QUAD4 element based on partition of unity.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 197(1-4), 128–147.
Salimzadeh, S., and Khalili, N. (2016). “Fully coupled XFEM model for flow and deformation in fractured porous media with explicit fracture flow.” Int. J. Geomech., 04015091.
Sethian, J. A. (1999). “Level set methods and fast marching methods: Evolving interfaces in computational geometry, fluid mechanics, computer vision, and materials science.” Cambridge monograph on applied and computational mathematics, Cambridge University Press, London.
Shi, Z. H., Suzuki, M., and Nakano, M. (2003). “Numerical analysis of multiple discrete cracks in concrete dams using extended fictitious crack model.” J. Struct. Eng., 324–336.
Tang, X. H., Paluszny, A., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2013). “Energy conservative property of impulse-based methods for collision resolution.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 95(6), 529–540.
Tang, X. H., Paluszny, A., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2014). “An impulse-based energy tracking method for collision resolution.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 278, 160–185.
Tang, X. H., Wu, S. C., and Zhang, J. H. (2009b). “A novel four-node quadrilateral element with continuous nodal stress.” Appl. Math. Mech., 30(12), 1519–1532.
Tang, X. H., Xu, X. Y., and Liu, Q. S. (2016). Modeling nonplanar propagation of 3D hydraulic fractures using high-order GFEM, American Rock Mechanics Association, Alexandria, VA.
Tang, X. H., Zheng, C., Wu, S. C., and Zhang, J. H. (2009a). “A novel virtual node method for polygonal elements.” Appl. Math. Mech., 30(10), 1233–1246.
Tunsakul, J., Jongpradist, P., Soparat, P., Kongkitkul, W., and Nanakorn, P. (2014). “Analysis of fracture propagation in a rock mass surrounding a tunnel under high internal pressure by the element-free Galerkin method.” Comput. Geotech., 55, 78–90.
Yan, C. Z., Zheng, H., Sun, G. H., and Ge, X. R. (2016). “Combined finite-discrete element method for simulation of hydraulic fracturing.” Rock Mech. Rock Eng., 49(4), 1389–1410.
Yang, T. H., Zhu, W. C., Yu, Q. L., and Liu, H. L. (2011). “The role of pore pressure during hydraulic fracturing and implications for groundwater outbursts in mining and tunnelling.” Hydrogeol. J., 19(5), 995–1008.
Yang, Y. T., Tang, X. H., and Zheng, H. (2014). “A three-node triangular element with continuous nodal stress.” Comput. Struct., 141, 46–58.
Yang, Y. T., Tang, X. H., and Zheng, H. (2015). “Construct ‘FE-Meshfree’ Quad4 using mean value coordinates.” Eng. Anal. Bound. Elem., 59, 78–88.
Zhang, Y. B., Wang, W. B., and Zhu, Y. (2015). “Investigation on conditions of hydraulic fracturing for asphalt concrete used as impervious core in dams.” Constr. Build. Mater., 93, 775–781.
Zienkiewicz, O. C., and Taylor, R. L. (2000). The finite element method: Its basis and fundamentals, Vol. 1, 5th Ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, U.K.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 17 • Issue 9 • September 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 5, 2016
Accepted: Feb 27, 2017
Published online: Jun 14, 2017
Published in print: Sep 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Nov 14, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.