Influence of Fluid Structure Interaction on a Concrete Dam during Seismic Excitation : -Parametric analyses of an Arch Dam-Reservoir-Foundation system

Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate how Fluid-Structure interaction is included in numerical earthquake analyses of dams. The base for this project is theme A from the 12th international benchmark workshop on numerical analysis of dams, which was held in October 2013. The focus of theme A was how to account for the fluid structure interaction in numerical earthquake analyses of dams. To highlight how engineers and researchers include this interaction in their analysis, a literature review of the modeling choices and conclusions from all participants are included. Since the workshop contains participants from seven countries, this review aims to describe of how this analysis is carried out in practice. Further, parametric numerical analyses are performed in this study, where the purpose is to isolate some important parameters and investigate how these influence the results in seismic analyses of dams. These analyses were performed through the use of the finite element method. The geometric model from the benchmark workshop was used and analysed with the commercial software Abaqus. The studied parameters are the choice of fluid element, Rayleigh damping parameters, reservoir boundaries and wave absorption in the foundation-reservoir interface. The water has a major effect on a dam's seismic behaviour and should be included in the analysis. The added mass approach gives similar results compared with a more sophisticated method. This simplified approach could be used in engineering purpose where the time is limited and the accuracy is of lesser importance, since the calculated stresses are conservative. Using acoustic finite elements provides a reasonable computation time, while also allowing for more advanced features, such as bottom absorption and non-reflecting boundaries The definition of Rayleigh damping has proven to be a very challenging task, especially as it has a large impact on the results. The choice of boundary conditions for the back end of the reservoir was the parameter that least influenced the results. The conservative approach is to use a fixed boundary where all pressure waves are reflected. The reflection coefficient for the foundation-reservoir interface has a large influence on the results, both for the participants that used this coefficient in the benchmark workshop and for the analyses presented in this study. The coefficient should therefore be used carefully.