Effect of drawdown velocity on the stability of a small earth dam
Effect of drawdown velocity on the stability of a small earth dam
The paper describes the numerical procedure developed to investigate the effects of different drawdown rates on the stability of a zoned earth dam. A rapid lowering of the reservoir may be necessary to deal with an emergency condition immediately after an earthquake, but this operation could generate harmful effects on the stability of a dam if compromised by a previous seismic event. The selected case study represents the prototype of a small earth dam, i.e. a dam that for combination of its embankment height and water stored by the reservoir is not categorized as large. Unfortunately, unlike the large dams for which very strict controls are imposed by the ministerial technical departments, the small earth dams are less controlled even if the risk associated with them could be as high as for the larger ones. Through a 3-phase numerical approach, solved by the finite element method, different drawdown scenarios were simulated and their effects on the stability of a small dam prototype were quantified to identify the drawdown procedures that should be avoided before and soon after a strong seismic event.
Mariagrazia Tretola; Stefania Sica
10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)
7. Dams, embankments and slopes
https://doi.org/10.53243/NUMGE2023-425
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