Dynamic Analysis of Al-Adhaim Zoned Earthdam

Abstract

Among external forces, the dam is subjected to earthquakes which are naturally orartificially occurring and resulting in time-varying deflections, excess pore water pressureand liquefaction at some zones in the dam.In this paper, coupled dynamic analysis has been carried out on zoned earthdamsubjected to earthquake excitation in which displacements and pore water pressures arecalculated. The finite element method is used and the computer program QUAKE/W isadopted for this task.Al-Adhaim dam which is an earthdam located near the place of intersection of Tuz Jayand the river Al-Adhaim is used as a case study. A parametric study was carried out toinvestigate the effect of the maximum earthquake horizontal acceleration on the generalresponse of the dam.It was found that as the maximum horizontal acceleration of the input motion increases,both horizontal and vertical displacement increase. In all cases, the effect of the input groundacceleration diminishes at time (60 sec.) from the time of earthquake shock. When themaximum horizontal acceleration of the input motion increases from (0.05g) to (0.2g), thehorizontal acceleration predicted at a node located at the core base increases by about(200 %) while the maximum effective stress increases by about (32 %).

Keywords

• earth dams
• finite elements
• dynamic
• zoned