Comprehensive Evaluation for Real-Time Compaction Quality Using <i>i</i>-AHP and <i>i</i>-GAM: Case Study of Earth-Rock Dam

Abstract

The real-time compaction quality evaluation of earth-rock dam plays a pivotal role in ensuring dam safety. However, the current real-time compaction quality evaluation only takes the physical properties of compacted dam materials into account, which fails to characterize whether their mechanical property meets the requirements of deformation and destruction, and no quantitative heterogeneity of real-time compaction quality is studied. This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation method to address these problems. First, based on on-site tests, real-time physical and mechanical indices are obtained. Next, the analytic hierarchy process, extended by the interval model (i-AHP) method, is introduced for real-time compaction quality evaluation considering both these indices, and the hybrid compaction index (HCI) is firstly proposed based on the i-AHP method. Finally, an improved geostatistical analysis method (i-GAM) is developed to quantify the real-time compaction quality heterogeneity. A case study of an earth-rock dam project in southwest China demonstrates the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.

Keywords

• compaction quality evaluation
• earth-rock dam
• physical and mechanical properties
• <i>i</i>-AHP method
• improved geostatistical analysis method (<i>i</i>-GAM)
• real-time compaction monitoring (RTCM)