COMPARISON OF THE PERFORMANCE OF AN EMBANKMENT DAM AND CONCRETE GRAVITY DAM UNDER NEAR-FIELD EARTHQUAKE

Abstract

One of the crucial elements impacting the dam’s seismic behaviour is the height of the reservoir’s water. As such, this study employs Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) to examine the performance of the Semenyih earth embankment dam and concrete gravity dam during near-field earthquakes with variations in the water level behind the embankment dam. Water levels varying from 0 to 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 and the entire height of the embankment dam are considered an essential measure of how well the structures perform. These assessments were conducted under seven near-field earthquake datasets utilising the ABAQUS finite element framework. Seven ground movements were transformed into response spectra and adjusted by the soil type’s characteristics to create an elastic response spectrum. According to Eurocode 8, the soil type A-based elastic response spectrum was created. The limit states of the embankment dam that are yielding and the final condition are discovered by applying the IDA approach based on static analysis. The earth embankment dam results of average Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) is 0.02 g for the yielding state and 0.57 g and 0.52 g, respectively, for the ultimate state. Meanwhile, the concrete gravity dam reveals 0.46 g and 0.59 at the yielding point, and the ultimate state is 0.59 g and 0.69 g. According to the findings, both types of dam operation at zero water level pose a greater danger than a full water reservoir, and the displacement for both dams was larger as the PGA rose. Lastly, the comparison between these two suggests that concrete gravity dams are more reliable to withstand the effect of seismic load.