The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Earthquake analysis and response of concrete gravity dams

Fenves, Gregory L.; Chopra, Anil K.

UCB/EERC-84/10, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1984-08, 228 pages (635/F45/1984)

The objectives of this work are to develop efficient techniques for analyzing the earthquake response of gravity dams and to investigate how dam-water-foundation rock interaction and alluvium and sediments that are invariably deposited at the bottom of reservoirs affect the dam response. In an initial investigation of the fundamental mode response of dams, the reservoir bottom materials are modeled approximately by a reservoir bottom that partially absorbs incident hydrodynamic pressure waves. A general analytical procedure, based on the substructure method, is then developed to compute the response of gravity dams to arbitrary ground motion including the simultaneous effects of dam-water interaction, dam-foundation rock interaction, and reservoir bottom absorption. The procedure is used to calculate dam response to harmonic and earthquake ground motion for a wide range of parameters. A simplified analytical procedure suitable for the preliminary design and safety evaluation of gravity dams is developed. An equivalent single degree-of-freedom (SDF) system is developed that approximately represents the fundamental mode response of gravity dams on flexible foundation rock with impounded water and absorptive reservoir bottom materials due to ground motion. The SDF system can then be used in a response spectrum analysis of dams.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-84-10.pdf (10 MB)