Numerical investigation of non-overflow section stability

Abstract

Constructing dams is one of the human achievements in developing urban societies. In the last few decades, rapid growth in developing the Red Sea coast and Sinai in Egypt has taken place. According to the UN Nexus definition, water, energy, and food are the main sources of sustainable development. The dam gives the best structure that can fulfill these requirements. The geology of Egypt in the concerning areas in both the Red Sea and Sinai shows that both areas are mountainous areas. The wadies in these mountains suffer from being exposed to severe weathering conditions. Flash floods and wind blowing are the main causes of exposing sedimentary rocks in these Wadies to different degrees of weathering. The present paper focuses on studying the effect of weathering on the engineering behavior of dams intended to be constructed in these areas. The examined rock foundations cover mud-stone, Sand-stone, and limestone. A published numerical model for Longtan Dam was utilized as a reference case to construct a verified numerical model that was later employed in a parametric study to clear the effect of weathering on the studied sediment rock. The verification and parametric study were carried out using GeoStudio software. The results show the clear effect of the variation in weathering on the engineering parameters of the examined sedimentary rock deposits.

Keywords

• GeoStudio
• dam
• weathering
• foundation
• Sinai