Assessment of the Dynamic Response of Pine Flat Concrete Gravity Dam. FEM Simulation of Dam-Foundation Interaction

Abstract

The seismic FEM modelling of the tallest non-overflow monolith of Pine Flat Dam, a large concrete gravity dam located on King’s River, in California, has been proposed as Theme A of the 15th ICOLD Benchmark Workshop on the Numerical Analysis of Dams. Different case studies have been proposed to study the response of the dam-reservoir-foundation system considering different dynamic loadings and approaches to simulate dam-foundation interaction, different behaviours for the dam concrete and different water levels: all the mandatory cases have been performed together with the non-linear case with the Endurance Time Analysis (ETA) method and the cases with massless foundation, still widely used in Italy for the seismic safety assessment of dams. The analyses have been carried out using the FEM code Abaqus, able to suitably model both the advanced dam-reservoir-foundation interaction and the non-linear behaviour of concrete. The performed set of simulations highlights the benefits of each of the studied approaches in the assessment of the seismic response of a dam-reservoir-foundation system.