This study presents shape optimization of a gravity dam imposing stability and principal stress constraints. A gravity dam is a large scale hydraulic structure consisting of huge amount of concrete material. Hence, an optimum design gives a cost-benefit structure due to the fact that small changes in shape of dam cross-section leads to large saving of concrete volume. T...

For the last decades, the design floods of numerous embankment reservoirs were re-evaluated, and the revised spillway outflows are typically larger than those used in the original designs. As a result, a number of overtopping protection systems were developed for embankments and earthfill dams, with applications encompassing river dykes, coastal barriers for storm surge and tsunami protections....

arch dams are generally built in cantilvever monoliths. vertical contraction joints between monoliths control the stresses due to concrete shrinkage and temperature variations. past studies in earthquake safety evaluation of the system often show the tensile fracture and local nonlinear deformation of joints. in this paper, some nonlinear joint element constitutive models are presented to exami...

Multi-layer neural networks have been used in this paper for modeling nonlinear behaviour of concrete gravity dams under earthquake excitation. Koyna dam which has been studied extensively by other authors in the past has been studied as test example in this paper too, where the nonlinear response of its crest has been modelled by the proposed algorithm. The main steps of the algorithm are as f...

Risk analysis methodologies can be useful tools to help decision-makers in dam safety engineering. One of the inputs needed for Quantitative Risk Analysis is an estimate of the probability of failure of the dam under study. Existing dams have been designed using the factor of safety, which is a concept associated with a certain mathematical model of the physical behavior of the dam. In dam engi...

Dams in countries with cold climate are subjected to ice loads during the winter, and these may have significant influence on the dam stability. The design value of the horizontal ice load varies between 50 – 200 kN/m from the South to the North of Sweden, according to the Swedish guideline for dam safety (RIDAS 2011). However, the size of the ice load cannot be dictated by the geographic locat...

In the present article, effect of non-uniform excitation of reservoir bottom on nonlinear response of concrete gravity dams is considered. Anisotropic damage mechanics approach is used to model nonlinear behavior of mass concrete in 2D space. The tallest monolith of Pine Flat dam is selected as a case study. The horizontal and vertical components of 1967 Koyna earthquake is used to excite the s...