High magnitude earthquakes have devastating effects that leads to severe human and material losses; when affecting concrete gravity dams, seisms devastate the surrounding habitat through sudden release of reservoir. Dam safety is therefore a significant issue to be accounted in order to prevent the failure of dams located in seismic regions.
The Baozhusi dam, the case study of this thesis, was exposed to 8.0 Ms (at the Mercalli scale) Wenchuan earthquake 2008 with intensity of (0.148 g) at the dam site. The earthquake intensity exceeded the design level of the dam (0.1 g); yet, the Baozhusi dam was not severely damaged as showed by tests. The present study case is a modeling and analyzing of the dynamical behavior of the Baozhusi dam during the earthquake duration.
The results show that the horizontal component of the ground motion predominate the dynamic response of the dam. It is confirmed that the horizontal component of the ground motion crossed the dam at its axis and therefore minimizing the damages on the concrete gravity dam.
Source: KTH
Authors: Alsuleimanagha, Zaid | Liang, Jing
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