NONLINEAR SEISMIC CRACKING ANALYSIS OF MEDIUM-HEIGHT CONCRETE GRAVITYDAMS

The non-linear dynamic response of concrete gravity darns under seismi c loads is a little-understood phenomenon due to limitations in the pr evious studies. The choice of a reliable concrete constitutive model a nd constitutive parameters to predict the performance of concrete grav ity dams under severe earthquake ground motion is one of the most comp lex tasks. The response of a typical medium-height concrete gravity da m to a realistic motion is examined using the ADINA concrete model. Th e fracture energy cracking criterion is applied to remove the unreason able mesh sensitivity of the results. The influence of the constitutiv e parameters on the earthquake response analysis of concrete gravity d ams is also discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.