The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Base sliding response of concrete gravity dams to earthquakes

Chopra, Anil K.; Zhang, Liping

UCB/EERC-91/05, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1991-05, 90 pages (540/C49/1991)

Analytical procedures are developed considering hydrodynamic effects to determine the response history of earthquake-induced sliding of a gravity dam monolith supported without bond on a horizontal, planar surface of rock. The analytical procedures presented are of two types of cases: (1) in which the dam is assumed to be rigid and (2) in which the dam is considered flexible with the deformations approximated by the contribution of only the fundamental mode of vibration. Response results demonstrate the direction of slide and conditions tending to increase the sliding displacement. The possibility of estimating the permanent sliding displacement of the dam by using previous sliding block analyses is explored.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-91-05.pdf (3 MB)