Earthquake performance evaluation of three-dimensional roller compacted concrete dams

A roller compacted concrete (RCC) dam should be analyzed under seismic ground motions for different conditions such as empty reservoir and full reservoir conditions. This study presents three-dimensional earthquake response and performance of a RCC dam considering materially non-linearity. For this purpose, Cine RCC dam constructed in Aydin. Turkey, is selected in applications. The three-dimensional finite element model of Cine RCC dam is obtained using ANSYS software. The Drucker-Prager material model is considered in the materially nonlinear time history analyses for concrete and foundation rock. Furthermore, hydrodynamic effect was investigated in linear and non-linear dynamic analyses. Researchers observe that how the tensile and compressive stresses change by hydrodynamic pressure effect. The hydrodynamic pressure of the reservoir water is modeled with the fluid finite elements based on the Lagrangian approach. In this study, dam body and foundation are modeled with welded contact. The displacements and principle stress components obtained from the linear and non-linear analyses with and without reservoir water are compared each other. Principle stresses during earthquake were obtained at the most critical point in the upstream face of dam body. Besides, the change of displacements and stresses by crest length were investigated. Moreover demand-capacity ratio criteria were also studied under linear dynamic and nonlinear analysis. Earthquake performance analyses were carried out for different cases and evaluated. According to linear and nonlinear analysis, hydrodynamic water effect is obvious in full reservoir situation. On the other hand, higher tensile stresses were observed in linear analyses and then non-linear analyses were performed and compared with each other.