The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Simplified analysis for earthquake resistant design of concrete gravity dams

Fenves, Gregory L.; Chopra, Anil K.

UCB/EERC-85/10, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1986-06, 149 pages (635/F45/1986)

A two-stage procedure was proposed in 1978 for the analysis phase of elastic design and safety evaluation of concrete gravity dams. The procedure consists of a simplified analysis procedure in which the response due only to the fundamental vibration mode is estimated directly from the earthquake design spectrum and a refined response history analysis procedure for finite element idealizations of the dam monolith. The former was recommended for the preliminary design and safety evaluation of dams and the latter for accurately computing the dynamic response and checking the adequacy of the preliminary evaluation. In this report, the simplified analysis procedure has been extended to include the effects of dam-foundation rock interaction and of reservoir bottom sediments in addition to the effects of dam-water interaction and water compressibility included in the earlier procedure. Also included in the simplified procedure is a static correction method which takes into account the response contributions of the higher vibration modes. The new simplified analysis procedure is recommended for use with the 1978 design procedure.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-85-10.pdf (4 MB)