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Dam Concrete in Situ Creep Tests. Experimental Setup and Results from Six Large Concrete Dams

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International RILEM Conference on Synergising Expertise towards Sustainability and Robustness of Cement-based Materials and Concrete Structures (SynerCrete 2023)

Part of the book series: RILEM Bookseries ((RILEM,volume 43))

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Abstract

This paper describes the main features of the experimental in situ setups used to estimate the concrete deformability from six large Portuguese dams, all of which were built in the last 25 years. These experimental setups are commonly referred to as creep cells and aim at determining the modulus of elasticity for different ages and estimating the creep curve, under the same thermo-hygrometric conditions as the dam.

Creep cells are composed of specimens of concrete with embedded strainmeters, placed in the body of a concrete dam during its construction, with a hydraulic flat-jack underneath. During the elastic modulus and the creep tests, while the jack introduces a given compressive stress in the specimen, the embedded strainmeters measure the subsequent strains, instantly or over time, for the modulus of elasticity or creep assessment, respectively.

In recent years, there have been several developments in the design and in the installation methodology of this type of experimental setup, namely in Alqueva, Baixo Sabor, Ribeiradio, Foz Tua, Daivões and Alto Tâmega dams.

The article also presents a brief compilation of the most important creep cells results for these dams, which are being used as an input to numerically evaluate the structure’s behaviour over time.

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References

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to EDIA - Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infraestruturas do Alqueva, S.A., EDP, Greenvouga, S.A., Movhera - Hidroelétricas do Norte, S.A and Engie - Hidroelétricas do Douro, Lda, for the permission for publishing the results presented in this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Laboratory for Civil Engineering, Lisbon, Portugal

    Carlos Serra, João Conde Silva, António Lopes Batista & Nuno Monteiro Azevedo

Authors
  1. Carlos Serra
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  2. João Conde Silva
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  3. António Lopes Batista
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  4. Nuno Monteiro Azevedo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to João Conde Silva .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Structural Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Agnieszka Jędrzejewska

  2. Technical Specialist Services, Materials, ARUP, London, UK

    Fragkoulis Kanavaris

  3. ISISE, University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal

    Miguel Azenha

  4. Laboratoire de Mécanique Paris-Saclay, ENS Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Farid Benboudjema

  5. Institute of Structural Concrete, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Dirk Schlicke

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Serra, C., Conde Silva, J., Lopes Batista, A., Monteiro Azevedo, N. (2023). Dam Concrete in Situ Creep Tests. Experimental Setup and Results from Six Large Concrete Dams. In: Jędrzejewska, A., Kanavaris, F., Azenha, M., Benboudjema, F., Schlicke, D. (eds) International RILEM Conference on Synergising Expertise towards Sustainability and Robustness of Cement-based Materials and Concrete Structures. SynerCrete 2023. RILEM Bookseries, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33211-1_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33211-1_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-33210-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-33211-1

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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