Seismic Fragility Functions of Concrete Gravity Dams: Fid-Bau Portal

Seismic Fragility Functions of Concrete Gravity Dams

Pranava Gayathri, K. / Sengupta, Piyali

Concrete gravity dams, as an energy generating infrastructure, serve a crucial role in the national economy of a country. With numerous earthquakes occurring across the world, seismic safety of dams becomes one of the highest concerns to the engineering community. Seismic damages of Koyna Dam, India in 1967, Hsingfengkiang Dam, China in 1962 and Sefid-Rud Dam, Iran in 1990 have garnered the consensus of the importance of seismic vulnerability assessment of dams. Consequences of dam failures may be catastrophic in terms of casualties, economic and environmental damages. With increasing levels of seismicity of different regions, several existing dams fail to meet the latest seismic design criteria associated with the newly-defined seismic hazard levels of the dam site. The effect of ageing-induced degradations, lack of routine maintenance and sediment deposition intensify the concern further. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to develop the numerical model of the dam-foundation-reservoir system and validate the model with respect to the existing experimental results from the literature. Subsequently, an extensive parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of structural geometry, material properties and ground motion characteristics on the seismic vulnerability of the concrete gravity dams. Furthermore, incremental dynamic analysis approach is adopted to derive the seismic fragility functions of the concrete gravity dams under different damage states. The key findings from this research would enlighten the researchers and practicing engineers about the realistic seismic fragility evaluation of concrete gravity dams to build a safe and resilient society.