Dynamic Analysis of Thermal Crack Propagation in Roller-Compacted Concrete Dams Considering Rotational Component of Ground Motion
نویسندگان
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran.
2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran.
3 Professor, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran.
doi
10.22059/ceij.2023.361667.1935چکیده
In the construction of Roller compacted Concrete Dams (RCD), two types of internal and external concrete are used; thermal cracks are occurred due to hydration of various cements in this type of dams. Ignorance of this issue can lead to crack formation in the susceptible points of the dams. In this research, the behavior of the thermal cracks existed in the RCD body, is investigated through translational and rotational components of the earthquake. Three-dimensional Finite Element (FE) model of the concrete dam is built in Abacus software, and the model was subjected to 7 earthquake records. After validation of the model, the propagation of the crack existed in the dam body is evaluated using fracture mechanics criterion. The results of the FE analysis show that the existence of the cracks in the susceptible points of the dam, leads to propagation of these cracks during an earthquake. Especially, with considering the rotational component of the earthquake which has the significant contribution in the obtained values of the crack propagation criterion; this contribution is related to the frequency content of the earthquake, which can lead to an increase of the crack propagation energy up to 50 percent in some earthquake records.
