Horizontal and Vertical Movement of Concrete Dam Erecting on Sandy Soil under Seismic Loading

Abstract

Concrete dams are the strongest dams, designed for flood control, electricity generation, and water management. They can become unstable due to ground shaking and earthquake impacts, resulting in stability loss due to embankment and foundation materials or severe deformations like slumping, settlement, cracking, and slope collapse. Where consider an earthquake one of the factors that pose a major threat to dams, especially if the earthquake is strong and if the soil under the dam is sandy soil, so that geotechnical designers should consider more than any other disaster when developing construction in seismically active areas. Therefore, a laboratory study was conducted on a model of concrete dam with dimensions (width =15 cm, high = 20 cm, and thick = 5cm) on fine sand soil. In order to study the stability of the concrete dam subjected to earthquake vibration, the model of the dam was subjected to different types of earthquakes (Halabja and El Centro). The main goal of the study is understanding the behavior and performance of concrete dam subjected to seismic load. It can be concluded that the stability of the concrete dam subjected to earthquake depends on the intensity of the earthquake. Thickness and width of the dam.   According to the results, the El-Centro earthquake effect on concrete dams is 60% greater than the Halabja earthquake.