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Predicting the Influence of Seasonal Thermally Induced Cracking on a Reinforced Concrete Arch Dam

  • Structural Engineering
  • Published:
KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering Aims and scope

Abstract

Many of the world’s concrete dams are approaching the end of their expected service life and many of these dams are cracked due to environmental effects. It is thus desirable to be able to extend the service life of many of these dams. It is therefore important to develop reliable methods of analysis to assess the current status of these dams and to determine the safety of these, partly damaged structures. A slender reinforced concrete arch dam is used as a case study with the aim of predicting the structural response, the cracks found in-situ and of assessing the safety of the dam. This dam has cracked extensively along the downstream face primarily due to seasonal temperature variations. A detailed finite element model has been developed to simulate the history of the dam with the variations in ambient conditions that have occurred over its lifetime. The results show good agreement regarding both the crack pattern and displacement of the dam. A procedure to simulate a progressive dam failure, starting from the current state, is utilized to assess the current level of safety. The results show that the cracking has a limited effect on the safety factor of the dam.

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Acknowledgments

This work was carried out as a part of Swedish Hydropower Centre — SVC, established by the Swedish Energy Agency, Energiforsk and Svenska Kraftnät together with Luleå University of Technology, KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology and Uppsala University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Civil and Architectural Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 114 28, Sweden

    Jonas Enzell, Richard Malm & Markus Tollsten

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  1. Jonas Enzell
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  2. Richard Malm
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  3. Markus Tollsten
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Correspondence to Jonas Enzell.

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Enzell, J., Malm, R. & Tollsten, M. Predicting the Influence of Seasonal Thermally Induced Cracking on a Reinforced Concrete Arch Dam. KSCE J Civ Eng 26, 2707–2721 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-022-0112-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-022-0112-7

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