Reservoir Fluctuation Effects on Seismic Response of High Concrete Arch Dams Considering Material Nonlinearity

Reservoir fluctuation effects on seismic response of concrete arch dams are investigated. Structure nonlinearity is originated from material nonlinearity due to tensile cracking and compression crushing of mass concrete using William-Warnke failure surface in principal stress state and reservoir is assumed compressible. An arch dam is selected as case study and TABAS earthquake record is used to excite the finite element model of dam-reservoir-foundation. It is found that principal stresses on upstream and downstream faces increase significantly with reservoir dewatering. Responses of dam in nonlinear model have special intricacies, but the extension of cracked areas develops meaningfully with decreasing reservoir water.