Authors
Abstract
Among external forces, the dam is subjected to earthquakes which are naturally or
artificially occurring and resulting in time-varying deflections, excess pore water pressure
and liquefaction at some zones in the dam.
In this paper, coupled dynamic analysis has been carried out on zoned earthdam
subjected to earthquake excitation in which displacements and pore water pressures are
calculated. The finite element method is used and the computer program QUAKE/W is
adopted for this task.
Al-Adhaim dam which is an earthdam located near the place of intersection of Tuz Jay
and the river Al-Adhaim is used as a case study. A parametric study was carried out to
investigate the effect of the maximum earthquake horizontal acceleration on the general
response 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 ground
acceleration diminishes at time (60 sec.) from the time of earthquake shock. When the
maximum horizontal acceleration of the input motion increases from (0.05g) to (0.2g), the
horizontal acceleration predicted at a node located at the core base increases by about
(200 %) while the maximum effective stress increases by about (32 %).
Keywords
)
